


A Path to Broken Stars

by stellardarlings



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Beauty & the Beast AU, Canon typical kidnapping, Cat BB-8 (Star Wars), Cursed prince Ben Solo, Enthusiastic consent under dubious circumstances, Eros & Psyche AU, F/M, Face-Sitting, Force Bond (Star Wars), Greek Mythology AU, If you know the myth you'll understand, Loss of Virginity, Oral Sex, Slow Burn, The bridal carry strikes back, Vaginal Sex, explicit hand holding, virgin!ben, virgin!rey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:07:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 24
Words: 183,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23743546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellardarlings/pseuds/stellardarlings
Summary: Since usurping the throne of Alderaan a decade ago, Emperor Snoke has banned the use of magical powers within the kingdom. Only Snoke himself and his elite Imperial Guard are allowed to wield magic for their own cruel, destructive ends.Rey is an orphan of Snoke's war of conquest and survives as a scavenger in the wastes of Jakku. The threat of death for using illicit magic is no concern of hers - until it is.Kylo Ren, the most fearsome of all of Snoke's masked warriors, sees something in Rey she'd rather he didn't. To protect her from Snoke, he hides her away in his abandoned ancestral home, teaching her how to wield the powers she barely understands. Rey's lonely - until she starts being visited at night by the mysterious Ben, whose face she can never look upon, but whose soul shines to her despite the darkness...Or: A quasi-medieval retelling of Eros and Psyche, with lashings of Beauty and the Beast.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 598
Kudos: 390





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my first Reylo longfic! This was inspired by discussing the Eros & Psyche myth with my beta Reylonging, and the result is this...
> 
> When I say longfic - I've set myself a Covid quarantine challenge to write this month. So far this story is over 50k words and will be over 75k by the end of the month. In total expect this to run to over 200k. Chapters will come every two weeks, and because I have a good stockpile there's not much danger of me running out anytime soon.
> 
> Come say hi on [Tumblr!](https://cellar-darlings.tumblr.com/) where I'll be posting sneak peeks of each chapter.

The din of war lies heavily over the ancient castle of Alderaan. The clash of swords, the beat of horse hooves, the screams of the dying. The stench of death is also folded over them like a cloak, ripe and sickly sweet. 

Queen Leia feels all of it and tries her hardest to ignore it, like every breath doesn’t make her stomach roil in protest. It will do her no good to become overwhelmed, not while the battle still rages.

Her sight is limited, given that she is hunkered down in a stone passage deep within the castle, one that leads to a safe hiding place outside of the city walls. Only the royal family know about these passages, and times like these prove why some secrets are necessary to keep.

“I can’t leave, Han,” she says, gripping her husband’s forearms tightly. “Not until I know our son is safe.”

She can’t feel him. Ben wasn’t in his chamber when the first shrieks came, though his bed had been slept in. Some of his armor was missing too, suggesting he’d leaped into action in the moments Leia had spent dazed and disoriented at being woken so abruptly. She tries to reach out to him through their mental bond but she is still too shaken. Her powers, already frail through lack of practice, are failing her. She can’t concentrate enough to find him, and that scares her more than any danger posed to herself.

Han takes her grip stoically. He’s never been the kind of man to wear his emotions loudly, and his ability to keep her calm is one of his many good qualities. Perhaps what, all those years ago, had led to her choosing a cavalier from such humble origins as her consort.

“I still don’t understand how Snoke’s forces got in here,” he says. “Nobody’s ever breached Alderaan’s walls, not in nearly a thousand years, and he did it so quickly? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Doesn’t it?” Leia asks. “It’s obvious. We’ve been betrayed.”

She says the words so lightly, but she feels them resonate through her husband with all the gravity they carry.

“Who?” Han shakes his head as a fresh round of screams goes up from the courtyard below them. “Snoke has no allies in this castle, not since his exposure.”

“He must do,” Leia replies, and she winces as she hears the clear sound of a death rattle rasping from a throat outside. One of her subjects breathing their last. Who—one of her loyal guards? A servant, somebody with no capacity to defend themselves against Snoke’s mercenaries? 

_Not Ben. Please not Ben_. 

Whoever it was, they were a soul she failed in her duty to protect.

She should have never let Snoke into her home when he’d arrived here eight years before, claiming sanctuary against persecution in his home land. He’d been charming and clever, and an apt tutor for her son. At least until she’d discovered him dabbling in dark magic, and plotting treason against her.

“The only way he could have breached the ancient magic protecting the castle is with help from someone on the inside,” she continues. “Those wards cannot be undone from the outside—I don’t even understand how they were taken apart by anyone not of Skywalker blood. And now I fear it’s too late to expel him.”

The attack had come in the hour before dawn, the enemy forces creeping across the kingdom under a blanket of fog which kept them hidden from sentries. Before the alarm went up, half of Leia’s guards had already had their throats slit.

Han had already urged her to leave, as soon as they’d retreated into the hidden passages, but Leia now recognized this isn’t a temporary action. They aren’t sheltering in here to ensure she survives the battle and can emerge to reclaim her throne once Snoke’s forces are routed. From everything she has seen and heard—it’s not her throne anymore. She’d lost the battle before she even knew it was under way.

“If I leave Alderaan, I fear we will never return,” she confesses to Han. “Not once Snoke has this land under his power.”

It’s Han’s turn to grip her, dipping his face towards her to mask the difference in their respective heights. “I don’t care, princess. I would give up this kingdom a thousand times to save you.”

His old nickname for her almost raises a smile to Leia’s face. No matter how long she’d been on the throne, he still wouldn’t surrender the teasing epithet he’d used since the day they’d met.

“Not without Ben.”

“I will find him,” Han swears. “I will find him and I will bring him to you. But you need to go. If something happens to you, our people will lose hope and the kingdom will lose the protection of your blood.”

Before she can protest—before she can remind her husband that she has her own sword, and her own kind of armor, Han is gone, slipping into the darkness of the passageway and out through one of the hidden entrances to the castle complex.

Being unable to see what’s going on in the world beyond is unbearable to her. There’s a way, even within these walls, that won’t betray her position or draw Snoke’s attention to her feeble magic. She creeps through the passage, keeping her steps light so the sound cannot echo and betray her position. At the first bend, she chooses the right hand fork and begins to climb a staircase that spirals halfway up the tower it wraps around.

Here and there, small fissures in the stone have been built in to allow the outer courtyard to be observed through a series of small mirrors. They reflect the outside world onto a larger mirror pinned to the wall, so there is no danger of being spied through the fissures or a careful arrow breaching her hideaway. There are other viewpoints like this scattered among the passages, clever engineering employed rather than the kind of magic which could be detected by a skilled user. Her ancestors always liked to use both where possible: that’s why when the castle wards failed, boiling oil and razor wire formed their own traps. 

She had underestimated Snoke so much.

When she approaches the mirror, at first she only sees her own reflection, dim and warped in the darkness of the passage. She seems older than usual to her own eyes, almost stooped, the silver in her dark braid standing out brightly and the lines around her mouth deeper because of her frown. The frown deepens as she straightens her shoulders, holding her solitary candle aloft. She is Queen Leia of Alderaan and she does not wilt before an enemy.

But the candle light changes the reflection to show her the scene outside, and she has to clap a hand over her own mouth to quiet her gasp at what she sees in the world beyond. Already it’s apparent that the battle is coming to an end.

No. This was no battle. This was slaughter.

The bodies of the castle’s inhabitants lie piled around the courtyard, blood pooling so deeply that the flagstones have disappeared under a crimson lake. If Ben is out there—

The only moving figure is Han. He holds his crossbow ready to fire, pivoting as he moves to ensure he isn’t surprised by somebody coming at him from his flank. He’s not stupid enough to venture into the center of the courtyard, keeping to the edges as he makes his way to the gatehouse.

Two figures enter the courtyard from the northern gate and Han freezes. 

Leia recognizes Snoke. How could she not? His face is a horror, a patchwork of scar tissue. He’s tall and spindly, his long fingers and limbs always reminding her of a spider. His gold cloak is ridiculously ostentatious and shows no bloodstains—nobody died directly at this hand tonight.

She doesn’t know the creature next to him. Equally as tall—both of them having inches on Han—and broad, but entirely clad in black, head to toe, from boots to cloak to gloves. Even his face is covered by a mask. Not a sliver of skin is shown, and Leia fears she is looking upon a demon. She shivers, because she can’t see the creature’s eyes, but she senses the dark magic and rage pouring out of it. There’d be no mercy to be found in those eyes.

At first she thinks they haven’t seen Han, that he will make his escape unscathed. But, with her breath tight in her throat, she can only watch as Snoke extends a hand in front of himself, flexing his fingers so that Han is plucked off his feet and flung to the ground.

Not that it keeps him down. He’s already pushing himself to his knees, firing off a crossbow bolt in Snoke’s direction without waiting to get back to his feet.

His aim is true. But the black-clad creature grabs the bolt out of the air, crushing it in his fist.

“Kill him,” Snoke instructs, and the creature nods, advancing on Han, who is now upright once more.

Han says something, but it’s too soft for Leia to hear from this distance. A plea of some kind. He even reaches out to the creature, as if he is appealing in some way. The creature pauses and Leia holds her breath, offering up a prayer to her ancestors. 

A moment later, she’s almost brought to her knees. A ripple of pain— _agony_ —has pulsed out from the courtyard. Leia doesn’t understand. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought it emanated from the creature, but he stands, tall and whole, not a wound to be seen.

Whatever Han has said, it doesn’t work. The creature extends its sword, already dripping with blood, and plunges it into Han’s abdomen.

Leia screams. It’s foolish, as good as asking for them to come kill her next. But oh, how can she keep this anguish inside, the sudden swell of pain that is Han’s life force being cut short? She feels it; she feels the moment he leaves her, and she can’t keep that locked inside her, so it rips from her in a wordless wail.

And underneath that, the first flare of Ben’s energy that she’s felt during the entire siege. It’s there, thready and oddly hard to connect to, but she feels him.

Two heads turn in her direction.

“Find her!” Snoke commands the creature.

At least she has the sense to run.

Down this time. It’s pointless to go upwards, not when that will leave her pinned at the top of the keep. Instead she plummets down the stairs, as fast as her feet will take her, until she is so far down that the entirety of the castle is above her head. Cellars, dungeons and moat, she is below them all. 

She reaches out for Ben, just for a moment, each jolt of connection the only thing stopping her from running back to Han’s prone body. Wherever Ben is, he’s alive, and it’s the only thing keeping her moving. He feels close by—getting closer with every step, even as she keeps moving, and she hopes this means he’s found his own way into the passages. He’s the only person left who knows about them.

This route runs underneath the moat and out into the caves that line the river bank. There’s a boat stashed, waiting, for a moment like this, and she can smell the river before she reaches it, sour and damp.

The cave is utterly still and dark when she emerges, the gentle lapping of the water amplified by the rock. She is able to find the boat using her candle, wedging it on a ledge beside the mooring ropes. She fumbles to loosen them. Ben is coming closer, and she is ready to go as soon as he reaches her. She’ll need his strength to help row.

From here, the river flows underground, and according to the maps disappears into the depths of the earth. Only she knows that it can be navigated, as it was by her great-grandfather, until it emerges in the wilds of Naboo. Her mother’s birthplace and a safe haven for the royal family of Alderaan for eons.

She steps into the boat, struggling with the knot of the final rope. A footstep crunches on the soil inside the cave, and she breathes a sigh of relief as Ben’s presence hums through her. She says his name as she turns to look at him—

It dies in her throat.

The masked creature looms over the boat, Han’s crossbow pointed at Leia’s heart.

She closes her eyes, allowing herself a moment to compose herself. She can still feel Ben, but also the angry, unstable presence she’d felt earlier. 

They’re one and the same.

The edges of his fury are dark and raw, spitting hot sparks out around him like a smith’s forge. Where has this come from? This isn’t her son, the quiet, eager boy who’d always felt like a shaft of light to her.

Now she knows what Han said in the courtyard.

“Ben,” she whispers. It’s a plea, but also an elegy. A prayer. A sound of mourning.

What has Snoke done to her son? What has she allowed him to do?

Leia knows now, of course, who betrayed them.

She can’t see his face, but now she understands who stands before her, she can read his body language. Indecision pours off him in waves, his shoulders almost quaking with the effort to keep himself contained.

“You don’t have to do this,” she murmurs. “Whatever he’s said—whatever he’s promised you—it doesn’t have to end like this.”

She holds her hand out to him. Thinks of all the times she’d cradled his head when he was a little boy, drying his tears with her gowns. She tries to ignore the image of him cutting Han down, and remember the tender, shy boy who’d always wanted her attention and affection.

The arm holding the crossbow wavers, its aim sliding lower.

“Ben, my only child. I can forgive you for _anything_.”

“Anything?” His voice through the mask is all wrong. Distorted and raspy. It’s like a lick of ice down her spine.

“Everything,” she promises.

The crossbow falls to his side, and she keeps her hand raised. Waiting for him to take it.

“We can undo this together,” she says soothingly, even though she has no idea how to even begin to turn the tide against Snoke.

She’s focused on Ben and can’t sense Snoke.

Not until his sword is at her throat.

“I’m afraid it ends here, your majesty,” he tells her in his gloating rasp. “Time for this land to be forged anew. A stronger hand at its till, using magic as it was always intended.”

Leia is perfectly still, casting a sad gaze up towards her son.

“Well done, my dark apprentice,” Snoke continues. “You have already proven your worth twice today. You’ve shown that your bloodline is not so corrupted yet. Your final act—the one that will prove your loyalty to me—is clear.”

Leia waits for Ben to move, but though he raises the crossbow a fraction, he does not strike.

Snoke waits a beat and no more. “A pity.”

He turns, raising the sword for a full killing blow, but Leia has already anticipated his move. She throws herself to one side, her outstretched hand yanking the crossbow from Ben’s unresisting grasp with her magic. Snoke’s blow instead slices through the rope still holding the boat to the river bank.

Leia fires the crossbow at him without taking the time to aim, without giving them time to anticipate and block it. It strikes him in the shoulder and he falls to the ground with a roar, while the boat is sent careening out into the current.

She falls, seeing stars, aware that the stinging pain in her leg is because she was also sliced by the sword there. She must make a tourniquet to stem the blood flow, but she has to fight past the way the world is swimming around her. Leia _must_ survive this.

It’s why she reloads the weapon with another bolt, pushing herself upright to try and finish Snoke off. This time she does aim, but it’s no good when the world is spinning so giddily around her. She fires at Snoke’s prone body, but instead hits the dark mass to his side. Ben.

She feels the resulting howl from her son as much as she hears it, but she doesn’t have the strength to even whisper an apology to him. All she can do, as she collapses backwards, is hope that she didn’t hit anything vital. That his armor was worth a damn. That he knows she wasn’t aiming for him at all.

The boat jerks around the bend and out of danger from Snoke—there is no path he can follow her on down here. Before the darkness falls, she lifts her head. This cave is her last view of Alderaan. The wounded creature beside Snoke is the last time she sees her son.


	2. Chapter One

The sun beats mercilessly over the desert wastelands at this time of year. There is precious little mercy in Rey’s life to begin with, but the height of summer strips it all away. 

She doesn’t complain, wouldn’t even if she had somebody to complain to. Nobody in Jakku bothers to listen to complaints, and takes them as a sign of weakness. Showing weakness is the worst thing to do here, because they’ll track you down and gut you, stripping your corpse for everything of value and then use your bones to brew stock with.

It’s not like anybody would miss her if that happened. Certainly nobody would step up to defend her.

Today has been a miserable day even without the sun at its fiercest, rivulets of sweat running down down her back until her threadbare tunic sticks to her skin. Sometimes the beads on her forehead roll down into her eyes while she works, both hands occupied so she can’t wipe them away. They sting and make her eyes water, so she has to pause in her work to blink the tears away. 

Rey stinks after a day cramped in the belly of this old war engine, which should be cool where she’s sheltered but instead feels like being cooked inside an oven. She needs to bathe and get the grime off her, but she doesn’t have the resources for that. The last drops of liquid in her drinking skin have long since been drained. From the meager pieces she’s been able to wrench out of the engine, it’s not going to be enough to replenish her supplies. Every drop of water matters, yet she sweats it all out as she works hers fingers to the bone to earn more water. It’s a cycle she’s never been able to puzzle her way out of.

She glances down at the blanket she has spread across the floor, where she’s been dropping pieces of metal all day. It doesn’t look like even enough to get a meal for the evening. Her only meal of the day.

Her belly rumbles at the thought, but she ignores it. She’s used to the feeling, her only lifelong companion.

She’s reflected in the twisted metal she’s working on, her mouth caught in a grimace as she wrenches. Her skin is pale and blotchy, freckles standing out like a pattern in her reflection. Damp strands of hair stick to her neck and forehead, despite her best attempts to scrape it all into her three customary buns on the back of her head. When she was young people liked to tell her she was pretty, and she supposes she can understand why despite the grimace, but she’s got no use for pretty. The grime is part of her now, under her nails and in the lines of her skin. It’s soaked into her clothes, the beige wraps which blend into the sand when she’s outside, even soaked into the goggles she uses to protect her eyes from the sunlight.

When the last bolt she’s been loosening comes free, she’s able to untangle the mass of wire caught inside the panel and add it to her collection on the ground. It’s all she has the energy to do for today, but the addition of the copper wiring makes her feel more optimistic. That’s always in demand. She wraps the blanket up into a bundle, tying it over her back alongside her makeshift quarterstaff, and begins the climb out of the engine.

Somehow, it’s worse as she clambers out into the daylight, the exposed metal hot enough to cook on. She takes extra care to make sure her skin is wrapped as she makes her way down the side of the engine, and even then each handhold and foothold feels like it will blister and char her.

Down on the sand, she turns in the direction of Niima.

It feels like forever away. 

She doesn’t want to make the journey tonight, but she must. She needs water and food, so she has to turn her scrap into Unkar Plutt in return for whatever rations he deems sufficient payment.

The rations have been getting smaller and smaller lately.

Rey understands why. The wastelands have been picked clean over the past decade, all kinds of scavengers hunting the deserts for scrap metal and weaponry left over from the battles that marked Snoke’s decisive victory over the kingdom. Before all this was desert, it used to be fertile plains. Or so she’s heard. Apparently they became arid and barren in the wake of the new claimant to the throne. Rey doesn’t remember it—doesn’t even really believe it. It’s a fairytale people like to tell themselves, of times when their lives were better, before the land was poisoned and littered with broken war engines.

There’s precious little scrap left to find now, unless the shifting sands throw up a new relic following a storm. What she’ll do when there’s nothing left to scavenge—when there’s nothing left to hand over to receive her rations—she doesn’t know. And she doesn’t think it’ll be long until that day comes.

Her stomach is twisting with hunger by the time she reaches Unkar’s stall in the market. Niima is less of a town and more of a collection of huts and cottages clustered around the old market square. Most people had left after the war, when the soil dried up, and moved elsewhere in the kingdom instead of eking out an existence here. The few that stayed are as beholden to Unkar as she is. He controls the trade in and out of the town, merchants only making the trip down the Pilgrim’s Road because he makes it worth their while.

There’s a line at the well, people waiting impatiently with buckets and waterskins while two of Unkar’s flunkies make sure nobody takes more than Unkar has decreed they’ve earned. Rey is eager to join the line herself. She wishes she had enough to earn herself a token for the bathhouse, but she knows the bundle on her back is too light to justify that.

Instead, she approaches Unkar’s stall, a ramshackle structure of wood which backs onto his storeroom and workshop. Some people have managed to prove their worth and gain work in the workshop—the work is hard but they are guaranteed rations and they’re out of the sun all day. Rey’s more than proved her skills and knowledge with the machines but she knows she isn’t destined for that—Unkar has another trade in mind for her, one that turns her stomach sour at the idea. He’d never give her a place in the workshop.

He grunts when she drops the blanket onto his counter, her tired and blistered fingers slowly working to undo the knots and reveal her haul. 

“Hurry up,” he orders her, his always thin patience even scarcer today. He’s a hulking man, not much taller than she is but his bulk—all those chins and rolls of fat—make him feel so much bigger. His eyes bulge a little, his tongue constantly flicking out like he’s trying to taste the air, and Rey has always thought of him as more toad than man.

When she unfurls the cloth, he turns his head away and spits on the ground by his feet. 

“Is this it?” he demands, waving a hand at the contents of the blanket. “This is the kriffing best you can do? Useless.”

Rey takes a deep breath. There’s no use in getting into it with him. “How much?” she asks instead.

“Two waterskins.”

“And?”

“And what? Two waterskins. That’s all this junk is worth.”

She stares at him for a moment, waiting for the punchline, despite the fact that Unkar Plutt has never before shown even an inkling of a sense of humor. She swallows, reminded of how dry her mouth is, how parched every part of her is.

He does smile after a moment, though there’s no mirth in it. No, it’s a creepy thing that slithers across his face, making the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. “You want food?” One of his hands shifts to hover near the tokens for the rations, Rey’s gaze tracking it, her belly practically whining at the mention of food.

“Yes,” she replies hoarsely.

“You know how you can earn it.”

His smile is a full leer now, and Rey takes a step away from the counter. Her hands are by her sides, curled into fists, but her sudden flare of anger—her indignation—is tempered by a wave of hunger and desperation. She could bargain, give up the water skins for rations instead, but that’s a deadly choice. And what he’s suggesting instead—

She won’t. Absolutely refuses to. She’s seen the girls who end up in Unkar’s call house—they all have this haunted look around their eyes, and they age so quickly, like the work they do uses up their spirit.

“You’d get a real bed and your own room,” Unkar continues, and he isn’t gloating. Rather, he’s trying to wheedle her, offer her things he thinks she wants. “You can use the bathhouse every day. Regular rations and water. I’ll even throw in spice to take the edge off.”

That’s the problem. It’s the spice that ages Unkar’s girls, withers them up until they might as well have been cast out into the desert to dessicate. She knows why he gives them it—it keeps them compliant, stops them from having babies, means they’ll let the men who pay Unkar coin do anything they want to them. But she also knows none of the girls ever last more than a couple of years before they are dumped out in the sands for the vultures to finish off.

Rey won’t end up there. She refuses. 

She lifts her chin. “Just the water, please,” she says, like they’ve struck an acceptable bargain.

Unkar narrows his eyes but tosses a token her way, throwing the empty blanket at her and turning his back on her.

She catches the token with trembling fingers and heads to the back of the line for the well. Two skins will get her through tomorrow, and she’ll find enough scrap tomorrow to get plenty of rations. She will, even if she has to head out to the Sinking Fields and poke around a little. Going hungry for one night is nothing, she’s done it before.

But what about the day after that? And the day after that?

One day the scrap will run out. Soon. Then she’ll have no choice but to become one of Unkar’s girls. It’s either that or leave Niima, both ideas equally terrifying, both likely to lead to her untimely death—if there is such a thing as a timely death in Jakku anymore.

If the kingdom’s borders were open, she’d take a chance and head for elsewhere, but the only place worth heading for is Naboo, and to get there she’d have to cross the open desert. She’d never make it alive. Otherwise, she would need to head deeper into the kingdom, where there is more work but more questions to be asked of her.

Questions like:  _ Who are you? Where do you come from? Why do you have no family? _

Unkar has told her the consequences of answering those questions. He’s drilled them into her since she was brought here when she was nine and left in Unkar’s dubious care. Snoke keeps records of everybody in the kingdom. Everybody—every birth, every death. If she were to turn up in a new town, she’d be expected to present papers to prove her identity, naming her family. And Rey can’t do that, because Unkar has kept her off the rolls for Niima, keeping her hidden from the Imperial Guard, just like he’d promised her parents he would.

Her family are gone, her parents killed in the rebellion against Snoke, never coming back to reclaim her. And for the crime of being born the daughter of rebels, she’d be cut down by the Imperial Guard as easily as the rebellion had been reduced to ash and bone in the Battle of Mustafar.

Rey has neared the front of the line, clutching her little blue token in her hand. The person at the well turns, heaving a bucket of water in front of them, and Rey lifts a hand in friendly recognition.

Maz blinks at her, her eyes magnified by the spectacles she has perched on the end of her nose. Then her wizened face breaks into a wide smile. “Rey!” She drops the bucket at Rey’s feet without sloshing any water over the edge. “It’s good to see you.”

Maz is tiny, barely reaching Rey’s chin, and older than anyone Rey has ever known. Despite that, she’s stronger than she looks—and craftier. She’s the only person who freely comes and goes from Niima, traveling to nearby towns on her little donkey. Rey doesn’t know what she does, but Unkar doesn’t seem to have any quarrel with it either—which probably means he profits from it, somehow. Sometimes Maz is away for weeks, and Rey hasn’t seen her in several of those.

Rey finally reaches the well, handing over her token to the guard and retrieving her empty skins from her belt. 

“Is that all you have?” Maz asks sharply. “No rations?”

Rey sucks in a breath. “It’s fine.” She begins to turn the crank that will bring the water bucket up and allow her to fill her skins. It clanks and echoes.

“Are things so bad?” Maz glances around. “I didn’t know resources had become so low.”

Water sloshes into Rey’s first skin, cool and clear. She can almost feel it sliding down her throat. “It’s fine,” she repeats.

Maz’s next words are low, too quiet for the guards’ ears to pick up over the noise of the crank. “I can get you the papers you need,” she murmurs. “To get you out of here. There are places you could find work for better rations, people I trust who I can send you to.”

Rey begins to fill her second skin, the implications prickling over her skin. This is the first confirmation she’s ever had that Maz is involved in something illicit. Something the Imperial Guard wouldn’t like. “I can’t pay for that.” Because it has to be expensive, that kind of help.

“Debts can be paid in many ways,” Maz responds. Rey feels her squeeze her arm, pat her on the back. “Think about it. A girl like you shouldn’t waste her life in a place like this.”

Then Maz is heaving her bucket away, disappearing into the crowd.

Rey hooks her filled skins back onto her belt, glancing sideways at the guards before she steps away from the well, but they seem to be oblivious. Instead she turns onto the path out of the market square, towards home. She can feel Unkar’s gaze tracking her as she goes.

Home is really only a hut on the fringes of the settlement. Half of it has collapsed, the roof long since sliding down into the gaping wound formed by the broken walls. She lives in one room, the only watertight, sand-tight room left, her scant furniture a hammock and a chest she keeps her scant belongings in. There’s an outhouse in the yard but no running water—Unkar controls all the wells.

He controls a lot of things in Niima, even Rey’s freedom. He hadn’t liked it when she’d decided to move into the hut, when she’d realized there was one habitable room she could use as a shelter.

“All you cost me to keep a roof over your head, girl,” he’d moaned all through her childhood, taking a cut of her salvage in payment for ensuring she somewhere to sleep at night. And yet when she’d found this place, and determined that nobody else wanted it, he’d complained even more. Probably at the loss of leverage over her.

“I’m taking responsibility for myself,” she’d said when she’d packed up her little knapsack of belongings. She’d been maybe twelve years old and thought she’d been doing Unkar a favor.

“After all I’ve done for you,” he’d complained instead, “you ungrateful little shit.”

She’d bitten her tongue instead of asking what exactly it was he’d ever done for her, when he’d made her work for every scrap she’d ever had. But it was foolish to go down that path—Unkar wouldn’t hesitate to sell her out if she stopped being useful to him.

One of the hut’s benefits is that it does remain cool even in the height of summer, the earthen floor a relief when she kicks her boots off and sinks her toes into it. She hooks her water skins to the hammock and slings her blanket down onto the top of her chest.

It lands with a quiet thump.

Rey frowns. The blanket is meant to be empty—has she missed handing something over to Unkar?

She kneels beside the chest to peel it open. Instead of the wiring or bolt she expects to find, there’s a bread roll and a lump of cheese nestled inside.

Where—

Oh.  _ Maz. _

There’s sweat in her eyes again, making them sting. Rey wastes no time stuffing the food into her mouth—the bread is hard and stale, the cheese sweating—but she doesn’t care. She’s had worse. She could have had nothing.

When she’s finished eating—four or five bites—she settles down in her hammock and washes down the food with a swig of water. Not too much, not when she’ll have to make it last for so long tomorrow. Then she considers Maz’s words.

_ “A girl like you shouldn’t waste her life in a place like this.” _

It’s tempting. This place was never meant to be Rey’s home, even if she doesn’t remember where home was before Jakku. A bustling town, with paved roads and plenty of food, and a warm house where she’d had a proper bed and dolls to play with. 

She tries to remember what her parents look like, but their faces are blurry and featureless in her memory. The only clear recollection she has of her parents isn’t of their faces—it’s their voices, and it’s a lie.

_ “We’ll come back for you, sweetheart—we promise.” _

Only they never had. Snoke had seen to that. She hates him, the man who stole her parents away from her, but it’s a vague kind of anger. The kind most people in the kingdom probably feel towards him, for killing loved ones and poisoning the land. For his stupid rules, his need for absolute control, and the way he’d driven away Queen Leia to her exile in Naboo. 

Rey’s anger is harder towards the voices who whispered that promise to her. Because they’d told her they loved her, but not enough to stay with her. They’d cared about the rebellion more. No, they’d broken their promise, all for the sake of a stupid, noble quest that was doomed to failure.

One thing life in Jakku has shown her is that bravery is foolish and will only get you killed. You keep your head down and maybe it’ll stay on your shoulders. She’ll never be so naive as to stand up against Snoke or his minions.

And Maz. Can Rey really trust Maz? Or is this a lure—her kindness a trap, to convince Rey to leave Jakku behind and venture into the unknown? Unkar doesn’t run the only call house in the kingdom, and Rey doesn’t want to end up in any of them.

She’ll have to choose, and soon. Her way of life is winding to its end, and then she’ll have no choices left at all.

* * *

Rey’s awake before dawn, her belly protesting its emptiness again. Not so long ago, she’d had a stash of oats in her chest to make gruel with every morning. Cold, watery gruel, but enough to sustain her during the day. Now, she consoles herself with a few mouthfuls of water, rolling out of her hammock despite the aches in her limbs. They never really go away.

She also catches a whiff of herself as she moves, and it’s not pretty. She considers passing through Niima and jumping into the well if she can’t earn herself a token into the bathhouse. At least then her clothes would be clean as well.

With one water skin emptied, she gathers her belongings, the blanket folded and draped over her back, her staff looped over her shoulder. If she’s not going to get any more sleep, then she may as well head out. The earlier she starts her day, the sooner she’ll find the haul that will feed her. 

Yesterday’s war engine is a bust. There’s nothing left in there that’s worth a damn, the outside too rusty to even justify the effort of taking it apart. She needs to find something new.

She’s going to have to venture into the Sinking Fields.

Rey hasn’t completely lost her head. She knows, as does everyone in Jakku, that you don’t head out there alone. You can, but you may as well be offering yourself up to the vultures on a plate—if your bones ever surface. The Sinking Fields shift so quickly that people only dare work them in pairs or small groups, one as a lookout, an anchor in case the other gets swallowed by the sands. The idea is they’ll pull you out if anything happens. The reality is they’ll pull the haul out and leave you to suffocate. Working in the Fields requires trust, and there’s none of that around here. 

That doesn’t matter. If she’s heading out that way, she needs a partner, and to find one she’ll need to ask around in the marketplace. Others will be willing to venture out with her, especially if she lets them be the anchor. That way they split the profits while she’ll do all the actual work. It’s not a fair deal, but it’s more likely to earn her some food and a wash tonight. They might even be done early enough to avoid the worst of the afternoon sun and go out for a second shift in the evening.

Niima is quiet but not empty. Some people come to Unkar’s stall in the morning, hoping for a better deal, as if he’ll be kinder fresh from a night’s sleep. Rey’s never found it made any difference; Unkar’s mood is consistently sour. The line for the well is as long as it ever is, and Rey is glad not to join it, ducking into the shade of an awning to claim a place on the old steps.

These steps led into the building Niima had once been run from, though it had long been shuttered when Snoke centralized administration of the entire kingdom in his own fortress. Nobody runs Niima anymore, and from what Rey understands it, other places face regular patrols by the Imperial Guard. Not here though. There’s nothing worth patrolling for here. Instead the building has fallen under Unkar’s control, and anybody who dares venture inside gets a beating.

Rey doesn’t want to go inside. She’s just taking her place to show people she’s interested in joining up for salvage work. If anybody else is as desperate as she is, they’ll know why she’s here. They’ll know her by reputation—how she’s good at getting into small spaces, how she knows what she’s looking at and how to take machinery apart. Someone will be interested if she waits long enough.

Maz joins the line at the well again, this time with skins instead of a bucket. She hasn’t seen Rey and seems to be humming a tune to herself as she waits. Whatever Maz does to earn tokens from Unkar, she never seems to go short. They probably have some sort of deal worked out—she must help Unkar out in the kingdom beyond Niima, to get the kind of free rein she does. Why else would she have the contacts to get Rey work elsewhere? And papers?

Rey’s thought of nothing else all night. What if Maz could do what she was suggesting? What if Rey could move to a town where the work isn’t quite as hard, where she could earn enough food to never feel hungry, where she could wash herself every day? What if she could go somewhere that meant she doesn’t have the sun beating down on her like this? What if she could look people in the eye and tell them that yes, she’s an orphan, but her parents had died of the sweating flu and she has the documents to prove it—not because they’d abandoned her to go fight a hopeless war?

It’s that or the Sinking Fields, and yet Rey knows that if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. 

She’s contemplating slipping down to thank Maz for her generosity last night—it would give her a chance to talk to the old woman for longer, maybe even assess how trustworthy she is with her offer—when she notices Unkar’s interest. Not in her, but in Maz. He’s frowning and summons one of his underlings, a scrawny little thing who scurries off after a word or two.

The space between Rey’s shoulder blades itches, and it’s not only sweat this time. She tracks the underling through the growing crowd, until he disappears round the corner. When she looks back at Unkar, he is watching her now, his stare narrow but the line of his mouth almost smug.

Rey doesn’t like this at all.

She’s already on her feet when there’s a ripple through the gathered people at the edge of the marketplace. A pathway splits open down the center of the square as those closest to that edge push themselves out of the way, and it only takes one glance for Rey to understand why.

Imperial Guard.

They’re all black clad and on horseback, light glinting off their weapons: huge broadswords strapped to their backs, maces and cudgels hanging at their sides. There’s enough metal there to keep Rey fed for months, and she knows she’s not the only person here to be making that mental calculation. Not that anybody makes a move—the Guard don’t have to rely on their ordinary weapons alone. They’re magic users, every last one, cultivated by Snoke to ensure that anybody who stands against him dies a painful death. The starving folk of Niima don’t stand a chance against a single Imperial Guard, never mind the five making a slow procession towards the well.

By the time everybody has noticed the Guard, there’s chaos in the square. Nobody wants to wait around and find out who their target is, instead trying to make a quick exit back to their homes, or out into the desert.

Not Rey. She’s on her feet, pushing through the crowd towards Unkar’s stall. She knows that he’s behind this.

She makes it just as the first command rings across the square. 

“Stay where you are!”

Everybody freezes. It’s no ordinary command. The will of a magic user has been thrown behind it to ensure they obey.

She thinks it comes from the Guard at the front, but it’s hard to tell when their faces are all covered in masks, their voices modulated to sound inhumanly deep and distorted. But is it only him controlling the entire crowd, or all of them combining their efforts? Either way, it’s a terrifying prospect. She’s heard the whispers, of course she has, but to witness their powers—to be caught up in what they’re actually able to do—

It’s not just hunger gnawing at her insides, nor heat causing the dribble of sweat from her pores. She forces herself to take deep breaths, slow and even. She’s faced worse, especially when she knows they aren’t hunting for her. Not the way they approach the well and surround Maz’s tiny figure, two dismounting to grasp her by the arms.

Rey leans across Unkar’s counter to hiss at him. “What did you do?”

Unkar shrugs, like this is none of his concern, but she recognizes the shine on his own forehead. He’s playing a dangerous game here, if his own enterprises aren’t all above board.

“She should leave well alone,” he grumbles. “If she kept out of other’s business, this wouldn’t happen.”

Rey understands, a strangled gasp escaping from her throat. 

This is about her. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” she vows. “She offered, that’s all. But I wasn’t going to accept—I swear. Now make it stop.”

Unkar shakes his head, those bulging eyes widening further. “It’s too late,” he says, and she thinks he’s genuinely regretful. “It’s too late now!”

And it is. There’s a new rider crossing the marketplace, and now Rey’s knees threaten to give out beneath her. Unkar sways a little, and half the people in the square are down, hoping they won’t be noticed if they make themselves as small as possible.

The rider is clad in black like all of them, but his mask is lined in ridges of silver. He wears a cloak, a ridiculous affectation in the desert, and rides with only one weapon. A peculiar, red-bladed sword, like the blade had been forged in blood. Maybe it had. There were so many rumors about this man, some of them had to be true.

Kylo Ren.

Snoke’s lieutenant. Until now, Rey had thought him some kind of myth, a bogeyman used to scare the people into behaving. The strongest of all Snoke’s guards, the one who’d killed Queen Leia’s husband, the one who’d supposedly killed the Crown Prince too all those years ago. 

“I didn’t know they’d send so many,” Unkar whispers urgently. “Especially not him!”

Kylo trots his horse, an ebony stallion, right up to the well, and drops something at Maz’s feet. Rey can’t see what it is, but Maz only stares up at him—at the void of his mask—with a hint of impatience, like she’s being delayed in going about her day.

“Maz Kanata,” he says, and his monstrous voice creeps down Rey’s spine. She’s not sure if it’s the fact that he’s on a horse, but he seems impossibly large, even compared to Unkar. 

Maz tips her face up towards Kylo and squints at him. She reaches up to adjust her goggles, a movement that has the Guards around her twitching and shoving weapons closer to her. “I must be important to bring you out here, hmm? Especially you, Ren.”

At least it sounds like Ren. The shocked muttering of the crowd at her impertinence has replaced the eerie hush. 

Kylo Ren doesn’t appear to react, and his voice when he continues sounds almost bored. “You’re accused of being a member of the Resistance. For that you are sentenced to death.”

Rey can feel the shock reverberate around the marketplace.

Maz merely folds her arms and heaves a weary sigh. “You say accused. Am I not to be afforded a trial?”

“The evidence of your deeds were found in your home.” Kylo gestures roughly at the package he’d dropped before Maz. “I see no need for wasting time.” He dips his head towards one of the Guards holding Maz. “Kill her.”

He turns his horse away, steering it to walk the path back out of the square. One Guard grips both of Maz’s arms, forcing her to her knees, while the other unsheathes his sword. Rey sees him ready himself, lifting the blade at the perfect angle to scythe through the air towards Maz’s neck. He swings—

“No!” she screams, throwing herself away from Unkar’s stall and across the marketplace towards the well. Her arms are outstretched, like she’s tried to grab the sword out of midair.

It has stopped in the middle of its stroke, but from the looks of the tense backs of the Guard wielding it, it’s from his own surprise as much as anything. Somebody speaking out against the Guard? Nobody else is moving, but the magic must have lifted from the crowd for her to have done what she just did. 

Rey isn’t sure why she’s even doing this, except she feels responsible. Maz was kind to her, the sort of kindness she’s known very little of, and she shouldn’t die for it. Even if Rey’s intervention means she, too, will probably die. It’s a cold realization as it settles around her, every eye in Niima now focused on her. She’s mere feet from the Guards. Outnumbered. Outmatched, definitely, in sheer weaponry alone.

Well. If she’s going to die—if she’s going to die for a stupid, noble cause, then she’s going down swinging.

Her staff is in her hands before any of the Guard have chance to react, and she’s using her lifetime of skills—her ability to leap and climb—to run up the steps and vault over behind them. 

She knocks the sword away from Maz with one swift knock of her staff, even if it jars up her arms. Then she sweeps his feet out from under him, letting him collide head-first with the stone well and slump there. She whirls, the other end of the staff sending the Guard holding Maz spinning into unconsciousness.

“Run!” she implores Maz, who doesn’t need telling twice. Rey seems to have broken the spell and chaos erupts in the square, allowing Maz’s tiny frame to disappear amongst all the other people running away.

Rey doesn’t know if she’ll make it out of Niima. She hopes so.

Instead she has to focus on her own fight. She knows—she knew from the moment she stepped forward—that she couldn’t win. There’s no escaping with her life. Even if it’s four against one now, those are impossible odds to escape from.

She hopes Maz has done good. She hopes Maz will continue to do good, if she really is a member of the Resistance. 

Rey hopes her parents would be proud of her if they could see her like this.

There’s a mace being swung at her head from horseback, but she—she bats it away, somehow. Sends it spinning back towards the Guard wielding it, who takes the blow to his own ribs. She ducks under, coming out the other side of the horse. For a moment, she thinks she might be able to slip into the crowd herself.

Then she freezes. Stuck in place, barely able to breathe or blink.

Kylo Ren has dismounted his horse in one heavy leap and is now stalking towards her, hand reaching out like hers had been before.

“Did you all forget how to use magic?” he demands of the rest of the Guard. 

Rey can barely breathe. She feels like she has been enveloped in a giant, invisible fist, and it’s crushing her slowly. She can only watch as Kylo Ren advances on her. She was right; he is huge—nearly a foot taller than her and he seems twice as wide. She can feel his anger, like it’s a raw, living thing, like the threat of a terrible storm hanging in the air.

“She’s a magic user too,” one of the Guards bites back. “Didn’t you feel what she did?”

What?

No she isn’t!

“I did,” Kylo replies tersely. “But she’s untrained, unlike you apparently useless wretches.”

“She’s strong with it!”

“Enough excuses.” The other Guards shut up. Rey can feel Kylo studying her despite the mask. Not only with his eyes—the presence that radiates all that anger out around him also slips around her, like a caress against her skin. One she jerks away from, because the power it contains feels like a march of insect bites. 

The grip around her eases for a moment, and Kylo dips his head in consideration. It almost feels like he—he approves?

“Do we kill her?” a Guard asks.

Rey struggles for breath again, and it has nothing to do with the hold Kylo has her in. Magic users are put to death. Always. Even if they’re wrong, even if she’s never used magic in her life, of course they’ll kill her.

“No,” Kylo says, and Rey gapes at him. “We take her to Snoke.”

She finds her voice once more. “I won’t go!” She begins to struggle against her invisible bindings. Dying here, now, is better than facing that monster. “Kill me and have it done with.”

“I don’t think so.” Kylo’s voice is almost soft. He makes a motion with his hand—and the world goes black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hello on my [Tumblr](https://cellar-darlings.tumblr.com/)! I'll post a sneak peek of Chapter Two next week.


	3. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The girl is in Kylo’s arms.
> 
> He reaches her before she hits the ground, her body slumping after he pushes her into unconsciousness. A crude method, but a necessary one given the way she’d been seconds from throwing off his restraints. Now he finds himself in the awkward position of cradling her against his body, one arm under her knees and one under her back, her slight frame as good as weightless.
> 
> Trudgen approaches, having helped up the useless Vicrul, who’d let go of their quarry when the girl knocked him down. “Shall I take her, Ren?”
> 
> Kylo has a momentary image of the girl slung over Trudgen’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
> 
> “No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all of your lovely comments on the Prologue and Chapter One!
> 
> In total over the month of April I got the total words written on this story up to 71,000 words. Now, that's only about a third of the story, but it does mean I won't be running out of chapters any time soon. Buckle up because this story is going to be a long one!

The girl is in Kylo’s arms.

He reaches her before she hits the ground, her body slumping after he pushes her into unconsciousness. A crude method, but a necessary one given the way she’d been seconds from throwing off his restraints. Now he finds himself in the awkward position of cradling her against his body, one arm under her knees and one under her back, her slight frame as good as weightless.

Trudgen approaches, having helped up the useless Vicrul, who’d let go of their quarry when the girl knocked him down. “Shall I take her, Ren?”

Kylo has a momentary image of the girl slung over Trudgen’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“No.”

The sound that comes through his mask is less a word, more of a guttural rattle. Kylo is thankful he can’t see Trudgen’s expression at his growled response. 

It would be simpler to let his men take the girl back to the transport, and yet Kylo is reluctant to hand her over to them. He tries to tell himself it’s because he’s the only one who can subdue her if she rouses—she’s already proven herself powerful, breaking free of the command hanging over the crowd. She’s also made a mockery of trained Imperial guards with nothing more than a crude quarterstaff and her own wits.

Yes. He must keep her close to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

“Bring her staff,” he barks at Vicrul, and he’s not sure why collecting the girl’s weapon feels important, but it does. He directs his next command to Ushar. “Find Maz Kanata, whatever it takes, even if you have to burn this settlement down.”

While the other guards fan out, weapons ready as they prepare to begin the methodical process of rooting out Kanata, he carries the girl across to Grimtaash. The horse is waiting patiently, his ink-black coat gleaming under the sun. For a stallion of such size and power, he’s always been remarkably docile—at least around Kylo. He’s got a nasty bite and a worse kick for most people. 

Kylo’s mask is making trickles of sweat run down his face. He hates Jakku. The heat, the sand—all of it.

Climbing onto Grimtaash’s back is a challenge with his arms full. Kylo is almost ready to call Trudgen over for help, but between using the stone edge of the well as a foothold and his own magic, he’s able to swing himself up and into the saddle with minimal awkwardness. 

The girl is cradled in front of him, most of her weight taken by the horse but still pressed against him so she doesn’t topple off, caged in by his arms. She’s warm. It should be unpleasant given the existing heat, but it’s a different kind of warmth, one he finds he doesn’t mind so much. He finds her presence, the quiet pulse of her magic, rather soothing when she’s calm in slumber. Before she’d had a jittery, panicked energy that had beaten against his shields.

He has one last task as he turns Grimtaash around to retrace their path out of Niima and towards their waiting transport. He signals to Trudgen, who is loitering awkwardly near his own mount with the girl’s staff.

“Dispose of Plutt.” 

It's loud enough the remaining crowd can hear it and a ripple of shock goes through them. Kylo doesn’t need to look at the stall where the junk trader stands, frozen as much by his own terror as any magic keeping him in place.

“B-but—” the man starts pleading. “I gave you information! I led you to a Resistance leader!”

Kylo doesn’t look back over his shoulder as he coaxes Grimtaash forward. “You’re running an illegal call house and interfering with Imperial supply lines for your own profit. Nothing goes unnoticed and nothing goes unpunished.”

The girl in his arms proves that last part isn’t entirely true, but Plutt’s death will ensure Kylo isn’t questioned on his honesty or inaccurately accused of being merciful. Grimtaash is already trotting out of the square by the time Plutt’s scream rises behind them, and is abruptly cut off.

* * *

Kylo calls his transport the Silencer. It’s effectively a war engine, two armored carriages pulled along by the foremost wagon and its coal-fired locomotive. Grimtaash rides in the rear carriage with plenty of hay and oats, while Kylo takes the central carriage, tinted glass windows meaning he can see out but the world cannot see inside. 

It would be faster for him to travel on Grimtaash, but the kingdom is vast enough that he would need to switch horses or rest to cover the full distance back to the fortress, and he has no intention of doing that on long journeys. Besides, traveling in this way provides him with a certain mystique. The kingdom is full of guards patrolling in transports like this one—but Kylo Ren appears out of nowhere on his fearsome black mount, or so the stories go.

The interior of the carriage is sparse. There is a bench where he can sit and rest if he needs to, a weapons chest, and a small writing bureau. Ordinarily he’d have removed the infernal mask and enjoyed some privacy.

Not today. Today he has company.

She is laid on the bench where he placed her, leaving him with no choice but to crouch on the floor instead. It’s not the most comfortable of ways to pass the journey, every bump in the road jarring through him, but comfort is not a regular occurrence in his life anyway. 

The carriage is not so large that he cannot study the girl as she sleeps. She is young, though not actually a child anymore, somewhere on the cusp of attaining her majority. Not that somewhere like Jakku celebrates a person reaching their twentieth year, even though it should, given how much of a miracle it is to do so. He suspects she looks younger when she’s unconscious like this. When she’d been awake she’d been full of a fierce determination that didn’t make her seem very childlike at all. 

That anger had burned hot as a flame, drawing him in like a moth. Magic is rare, but he’s exterminated plenty of other magic users in his time, even those with paltry reserves of it. She outstrips them all, but her anger makes her special, makes her someone Snoke might not want to eliminate immediately. 

But like this, she is peaceful. Her face is turned towards him, the way her hair is tied back into those three loops leaving it completely bare to his scrutiny, bar a few wisps that frame it. She is slim—verging on bony, and that’s no surprise given where she was living. Her features are even, her bone structure delicate, her skin golden and scattered with freckles. 

She is…pretty. Despite the grime, despite the rags she wears. It’s a wonder she wasn’t put to work in Plutt’s call house, but if she was she’d be a wizened, wasted thing by now. He tries to dismiss his appreciation; it’s irrelevant to his mission. She’s no aristocratic beauty, especially not with that sun-kissed skin—but then aristocratic blood is no guarantee of good looks anyway. He’s seen his own face in enough mirrors to appreciate that fact.

_ The mask is a blessing, really.  _ Snoke’s voice skitters through his head. It’s only a memory, but it’s enough to make him tense up, his fingers curling into fists.  _ Who would want to see your face? Especially after all you’ve done… _

It ensures he keeps the mask on. No matter how much he wants to remove it and breathe freely. 

The journey is smoother now they have reached an Imperial road rather than rattling across the dirt tracks that stretch to the fringes of the kingdom. The Silencer’s massive wheels eat up the miles. He has little to do except contemplate what he will say to Snoke when they reach the fortress.

He will be punished. He understands that—Niima lies in ruins but Kanata remains loose, unless one of the guards finds her body among the burning remains. But he trusts that his master will recognize the greater find that Kylo is bringing to him. 

Their orders…no, their  _ instructions _ , since if it had been an order Kylo would not have disobeyed…are to kill all magic users. Yet this girl is brimming with so much raw, untrained power. She’d barely seemed to understand what she was doing as she used it, which means she is pure. Unmolded. With the right guidance, and the right teacher, she could become incredible; that well of anger within her being used to sharpen and guide her power into something truly special. And though  _ special _ hardly describes what he and Snoke’s chosen few use their abilities for, it’s better than leaving her to rot in Jakku.

Perhaps death would be the kinder option. Certainly nobody could accuse Snoke of being a kind master. But every time Kylo contemplates snuffing her out, he recoils, horrified at himself.

No. Such potential must live. Snoke will understand when he sees her.

The first stirrings of her consciousness shift at the edge of his own, and he settles into a new position. On his haunches, ready to get to his feet if required. He can immobilize her again if he needs to, but has decided to let her react however she will. It will tell him so much about her. 

He’s quite sure she’ll go for the staff propped up in the corner of the carriage behind him, despite how useless it will be in the confined space where she cannot wield it properly. But perhaps she will bare her teeth and take him on without a weapon instead.

She nuzzles into the bench cushion, her eyes scrunching together in a frown as she begins to rouse. He can feel the moment she veers from content drowsiness to being alert, long eyelashes fluttering in confusion—and he watches her body tense with the change. It’s all too brief and only his own excellent reflexes prepare him for her movement.

The girl rolls, landing on her feet before her eyes are really open, and she’s reaching for something not there. She stumbles, thrown by the rocking of the carriage, and blinks around at the surroundings she was not expecting to find herself in, then jolts backwards when she discovers him in such close proximity.

To his surprise, she doesn’t try to fight him at all. Instead she leaps up onto the bench and puts her back to the wall. Her fists are clenched at her sides and her gaze sweeps the small space, taking it all in.

“What is this?” she asks and though her fear licks against his shields she is able to keep it out of her voice. “Where am I?”

She’s in no place to make demands like this, but he decides he rather likes the jut of her chin as she pretends she has some power in this situation. No doubt she has been backed into a corner like this before and has learned not to show weakness.

“In my transport,” he replies. “Wouldn’t you rather start with introductions? I’m—”

“I know who you are,” she cuts in. Ah. There’s the spark he sensed in her earlier.

“Then you have me at a disadvantage.”

She snorts at this, her gaze cutting towards her staff. He can see her doing the mental calculations and then deciding against launching herself across him to grab for it. This is one of the benefits of the mask; she cannot see if his mouth twitches, the corners lifting in something dangerously close to a smile.

“Where are you taking me?”

“That depends.”

Her eyes narrow. “On what?”

“On the answers you give me.”

It’s not true—this journey inevitably leads to Snoke’s fortress. But he’d like to know more about her, and this way she will be off-balance, aware of the power he holds over her and perhaps more willing to cooperate if she believes the outcome will be favorable to her.

“I don’t have any answers.” Her chin lifts again. “I’m just a scavenger, so you might as well take me back to Niima.”

He likes her courage. She does an excellent impression of being unafraid of him, despite the alarm ringing through her.

“There’s nothing left to take you back to,” he tells her. “Niima has been completely razed.” He feels the ripple of horror pass through her as it flickers across her face. It’s been so long since he’s felt anyone whose emotions have been this intense and open to him—she is unshielded, but so are most people. Perhaps it’s because she is a magic user too, and that makes what she feels so potent to him? He’s intrigued and he shouldn’t be, because Snoke—Snoke will… “And you aren’t  _ just _ a scavenger, are you?”

Her confusion is thick enough to taste. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You wield magic.”

“No.” She has circled back to panic. He understands: being a magic user is a death sentence and it’s in her interests to deny it all. But the confusion remains, a peppery note on the back of his tongue. “You said that in Niima and it’s not true, I’ve  _ never _ used magic. If I could—” She shakes her head.

If she could, she wouldn’t have been working for scraps for somebody like Plutt. 

“Jakku is a good place to hide from scrutiny,” he suggests. “You wouldn’t be the first. Men like Plutt will happily take credits to keep that kind of secret—but Plutt is dead. By all rights, you should be too. I am being extraordinarily merciful with you—and I am not known for showing mercy.”

The expression on her face makes it clear she’s aware of that.

“I don’t know what happened,” she protests, “but you—you must be confused. I can’t use magic—I don’t know how!”

“And yet you did. Not only did you wield it, but you resisted it. I felt that, just as I can feel you now. As I’m sure you can feel me.”

She blinks and looks away, confirming she does. He wonders what he feels like to her. Is it pleasant?—but no, it can’t be. His magic is unstable and uncomfortable from the inside, so it must feel that way on the outside too. 

Kylo experiences her acceptance a moment after it settles into her. She understands that she can use magic, even if she isn’t sure how. Then a wave of determination follows.

Her gaze skates back across to the staff behind him and then casually away. She telegraphs that she is about to move, and he lets her.

She springs off the bench and feints towards his left. He doesn’t shift to meet her, instead sending a wisp of magic backwards to pin her staff to the wall. When she reaches for it, trying to call for it with her right hand, it doesn’t move.

It wants to. Whatever instinct she is using to shape her magic, it’s right. The staff  _ should _ fly into her fingers. Only his greater strength and practice means she is thwarted.

And she  _ knows _ . He feels the edge of her energy creeping around his hold on the staff, her eyes widening when she recognizes his signature. She steps backwards, staggering back onto the bench as far from him as she can get.

Yes, he imagines his signature feels very unpleasant indeed.

“Who trained you?” he asks. He knows the answer is that nobody has, because then she might have stood a chance at besting him. He even likes the idea of her doing so. More than that, he's thrilled by the possibility of being the first to train her .  But right now, he is only trying to lure more information from her. “The Resistance?”

“I don’t know anybody who’s with the Resistance,” she spits, like the idea is offensive to her. Interesting. She’s shown no particular allegiance to Snoke, but has shown a distaste for his enemies too. He feels a knot of unease loosen in his chest. If she had turned out to be affiliated with the Resistance in any way, it would have reflected poorly on him, and encouraged Snoke in his worst urges when it came to dispatching her. 

“You know Mistress Kanata,” he points out.

“Maz?” Her eyebrows knit together in a small frown. “Not really, not beyond the way everybody in Niima knows everybody else. She was kind to me. Gave me food sometimes.” She looks at him, as if she can see through the mask, and her eyes are shining. “Is she alive?”

It takes Kylo a moment to recognize that she is on the verge of tears. A new emotion swells within him, something very small and uncomfortable, buried deep beneath everything else. Something so foreign he struggles to place it at first; tenderness. His gloved thumb twitches with the urge to sweep under her eyes and wipe the tears away, unshed as they are.

He makes a fist instead, smothering the urge with the disquiet it has created. 

“You’ll be relieved to know I have no idea.” He rises from his crouch, watching her gaze sweep upwards as he reaches his full height. Even with her perched on the bench, he is still as tall as her. She is not petite, except for the ways some of her bones jut under her skin, and that slightness makes him feel even more oversized than usual in comparison. “Will you come down from there?”

She doesn’t even consider his request. “I feel safer like this, knowing a creature in a mask was watching me sleep.”

He is thankful she can’t see the flush on his cheeks, the way the blood in his face rushes towards them, because she isn’t wrong.

“If you are lucky,” he tells her instead, “you will receive your own mask in time. If you prove that you are ready to be trained.”

“I don’t want a mask, and I don’t want to be trained.”

“You know what the alternative is.” The mask alters his tone, removing the pleading note from his voice and making his words sound more like a statement. Cold and detached, rather than an attempt at making her cooperate. “You have so much potential—and that kind of potential can only be wielded by the Emperor.”

The girl remains outwardly impassive, her arms folded, even if her fear grazes against him. 

“Surely it’s a better alternative than working in Plutt’s call house.”

Another spike of anger, and it’s delicious. “I have  _ never _ —” The loud rumble her belly makes undercuts the moment. Secretly, he’s pleased at this indication that she’s as innocent as she appears. Not that it will matter in the end, not when she is destined to a life of service, just like he is. But still.

The rumble gives him an idea.

“I have food,” he says. “Plenty of it. You can have some, if you’d like.”

She handed him the idea when she mentioned Kanata feeding her. It’s clearly a route to her affection—or at least, a way to get her to let her hackles down.

Her jaw clenches at the mention of food, her stomach growling even louder. He turns, careful not to give her his back, opening the uppermost drawer in the chest beside him and pulling out a selection of items. Things suitable for eating while traveling. Nutritious, if not particularly tasty.

That doesn’t stop her breath from hitching as he lays out the food on top of the chest. Oat flatbreads, a canteen of soup, an apple, and a flask of water. 

“Why?” she asks in suspicion.

He wants to tell her that she will need her strength to survive what is ahead of them. Snoke will not go easy as he tests her, and while Kylo is convinced she will easily impress his master based on what she’s been able to do with no training at all, she will do better if she’s not so malnourished. But he can’t tell her that, because it would sound like a kindness. He can’t have her expecting kindness from him.

“Consider it a trade,” he says instead. “I give you food, you answer my questions.”

She remains where she is, but the gleam in her eye as she stares at the apple suggests she has already lost the battle with herself. He holds it up to her, turning it so she can watch the light reflect from its green skin. She swallows, her hands clenching at her sides before she grunts and steps down from the bench, reaching for the apple.

He shifts it out of her reach. “An answer for an item. That seems fair.” He shields the rest of the food so she cannot snatch it away with magic, and she shoots him a dark glare when she realizes that he’s one step ahead of her.

“Fine,” she agrees, her belly betraying her eagerness again. 

“When was the last time you ate?” he asks sharply, before realizing too late that he’s wasted his first question.

“Yesterday.” She stretches for the apple again, and he hands it to her, even though he isn’t satisfied with her answer. He wants to know exactly when, and what she ate, but he’s also not wasting more questions to find out.

She is careful not to let her fingers touch even his gloved hands. Then she sinks down onto the bench, cupping the apple in her palms with a sweet expression of wonder. Kylo’s not sure he’s seen anyone look at another person with as much lust as she’s staring at that apple.

When she bites into it, it’s not her lust that spikes. It’s his own.

“What’s your name?” he asks, but she shakes her head, her mouth full as she crunches her way through the apple. She’s a messy eater, juice dribbling down her chin and fingers, but she’s happy to lick herself clean and he is happy to watch her do it. He should be repulsed—these are possibly the worst table manners he’s ever come across, and that includes Vicrul. Instead he is charmed by it.

He cannot allow that. If Snoke senses anything—

She even swallows the apple core.

Then points expectantly at the flatbread. 

He holds up a hand to indicate she should wait, then curls his other fingers around the canteen of soup. It is cold, and perfectly edible while it is, but a little demonstration of power and control won’t harm. He lets his magic flow down into the canteen, bubbling up through the soup until it is piping hot and steaming.

“You should eat both of these together,” he explains. “So first you must answer two questions.”

“My name is Rey,” she says.

_ Rey. _ Simple. Pretty. It makes him think of sunlight—which is how she feels to him. Always warm, but sometimes burning hot.

“And your family name?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know.” She holds out her hands for the soup, and he shifts it away. “That was two questions!”

“It was one—you didn’t answer it in full the first time.”

“It’s not my fault that I couldn’t!”

Her anger rises again, as quick as ever. A weapon she has learned to wield easily.

No. Not a weapon. A shield.

“Why are you angry?” he asks.

“Because you play dirty tricks like this!” she replies impatiently.

“Not right now. Why are  _ you _ angry?”

She stares at him, confused. “Everybody gets angry sometimes.”

“They do. But you—you are brimming with it. It’s there underneath everything. It’s the very foundation of you.”

“ _ Get out of my head _ .”

“You must answer the question if you want the food.”

When the silence stretches, he opens the drawer, preparing to put the soup away again, and she whines in the back of her throat before opening her mouth to respond.

“I don’t know! Why wouldn’t I be angry—I was left in Jakku and have spent my entire life fighting for every scrap of food, every droplet of water, every single thing I have ever had. Wouldn’t that make  _ you _ angry?”

“It would.” He hands the flatbread to her, but leaves the canteen where it is. She narrows her eyes at him, before turning her concentration to the container.

It spins across the room into her open hand. Her astonishment is a bright, shining thing in the confines of the carriage. It chafes against Kylo, who hasn’t felt anything so luminous near him in years, and he flinches away.

She eats the soup as messily as she did the apple, gulping it down in between dunking chunks of bread in. She moans her appreciation when she discovers that it is warm, and when it is nearly empty she tips her head back to make sure she gets all of the dregs.

As carefully as he is watching her, he still almost misses her slight of hand, tucking one of the pieces of bread into her pocket.

“You don’t need to save the food for later,” he tells her. “I have more.”

She freezes, casting a guilty look at him, though she doesn’t remove the bread. Her mistrust is clear, and he can hardly blame her given the life she’s lived. 

But if food is how to gain her trust and loyalty, food is what he’ll use.

“There is plenty of food in the Emperor’s fortress. You won’t starve there.”

“So that’s where you’re taking me,” she replies. “To the Emperor. Like you said before.”

“Yes.”

“What’s going to happen?” Her energy coils around her, like she’s preparing to move again, but this time he thinks it’s something else. Preparation. Anticipation. The adrenaline of knowing something is coming and being ready to deal with it.

“You’ll meet the Emperor. He’ll test you and determine if you’re worthy of training.”

She swallows. “And if I’m not?”

“You are.” Of that much, he’s certain. 

He can practically see the cogs in her brain turning, trying to formulate a plan. Something that doesn’t involve her staff—he watches her gaze cut to it and then away dismissively. She will not submit easily. 

And he’s thrilled about it. It’s part of what makes her special and what will make her a truly excellent magic wielder when she’s trained.

Kylo wishes he could let her go. He’s confident that she wouldn’t run to the Resistance if he did, instead disappearing into the nearest city, or maybe even finding a path out of the kingdom to somewhere like Naboo. He thinks she would deserve that—the fortress will barely be an improvement on Jakku, if she’s even given the privilege of training. But the other guards saw him take her, and Kylo cannot be seen to be weak. Losing her would certainly be a sign of weakness.

“How long until we get there?” Her voice is very small, tight enough to almost hide the quaver in it.

“Not long at all.” Night has settled around the carriage as they’ve spoken, leaving the approach to the fortress blanketed in darkness outside the window. But he knows the grooves of these roads well enough, given how often he’s traveled on them. And he knows the whispers churning around him best of all. He can’t hear words, just their incessant, maddening hissing, brushing over his skin like moths wings, if moths delivered a sting. They are always there, but the further he gets from the fortress the quieter they get. Now they are tightening around him once more. A sure sign he and the girl… _ Rey _ …have almost arrived.

In the back of his head, a broken, wheezing laugh works its way down his spine. Seconds later, the locomotive grinds to a halt, and the winch of the main gates begins its creaking work to open them up.

“Why have we stopped?” she asks, but she understands without him needing to answer. They have arrived.

It’s now or never for her to make her escape.

She chooses now.

In one fluid motion she’s on her feet, smashing the metal canteen into the closest window before he can grab for her. She’s already halfway out of the window, feet first, before he springs into motion himself.

He’s blocked by her staff, now clutched in her outstretched fist. She jams it into his ribs and while he’s bent over gasping, she propels herself completely out of the carriage.

He wrenches the door open and barrels after her into the night. 

He can’t lose her now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on Tumblr for a teaser of chapter three next Sunday (May 10).


	4. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey has little time to orient herself when she lands outside the transport, the impact with the solid ground jolting hard up through her feet. It’s not like the yielding sands of Jakku. Glass crunches underneath her and it’s a miracle she hasn’t cut herself—at least, not that she can feel. 
> 
> High above are a pair of torches attempting to light the area, illuminating an imposing set of iron gates to her left and the equally ominous stone walls they’re set into, soaring far above her head. 
> 
> A man has climbed out of the front carriage of the transport to see to the gates—the driver, likely, based on his uniform—and he gapes at her sudden appearance. She swings at him with her staff, knocking him to the ground, then plucks the crossbow from his grip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Thanks for your lovely comments on the story so far.
> 
> This chapter is where the "graphic depictions of violence" comes into play. If you want to skip that section, please see the notes at the end first, which will tell you when to stop reading and when to start again, and summarise what you missed.

Rey has little time to orient herself when she lands outside the transport, the impact with the solid ground jolting hard up through her feet. It’s not like the yielding sands of Jakku. Glass crunches underneath her and it’s a miracle she hasn’t cut herself—at least, not that she can feel. 

High above are a pair of torches attempting to light the area, illuminating an imposing set of iron gates to her left and the equally ominous stone walls they’re set into, soaring far above her head. 

A man has climbed out of the front carriage of the transport to see to the gates—the driver, likely, based on his uniform—and he gapes at her sudden appearance. She swings at him with her staff, knocking him to the ground, then plucks the crossbow from his grip.

It’s too dark to see the land around her. Moving away from the gates seems like the best option.

She breaks into a sprint, pounding down the road along the edge of the transport. They seem to be in some kind of tunnel with an open roof, the sky visible above with its paltry scattering of stars. The transport is enormous, a distant cousin to some of the relics she’d picked clean in the desert, but even in the darkness its black paintwork and chrome manages to gleam.

The road is paved in stone and relatively flat, but ahead it forks, the tunnel opening out into the emptiness of the countryside. One branch winds down a hillside towards a town, squatting at the bottom of the valley with scarce enough torchlight to seem deserted. Rey briefly wonders if she can make it there, except she can feel Kylo’s energy radiating behind her. Fury spits along her skin like spatters of hot fat, and she can hear his boots as they hit the stone. She has to make a choice.

Abruptly she drops to her knees, rolling under the stationary transport. It’s hot, the undercarriage lined with not only a metal frame but elaborate piping. It kicks out as much heat as if it had been sat in the sands of Jakku absorbing the sun all day. From what she understands from her study of mechanical structures, steam and other hot gasses run through the pipes. 

She wriggles her way through without catching any bare skin, years of practice kicking in. In the back of her head she can’t help totting up how many portions she’d receive for just one of the transport’s wheel hubs. Each spoke is easily as long as her calf—that’s worth a month of baths.

Rey shakes her head, twisting underneath a piece of chassis that she has to lie flat on her back to pass under. Now is not the time to think about Jakku.

When she reaches the other side she’s immediately on her feet. She hopes Kylo didn’t see her drop under the transport, but even if he did, he couldn’t follow her that way. He’s too big—a lack of rations finally counting in her favor. He’ll have to come right around the carriage, and she has no intention of being here when he does.

And here, with the meager light of the moon not blocked by the transport, she can see that they aren’t in a tunnel at all. Instead, the road is lined with trees—bare, straight trunks giving way to an overhead canopy which casts a shadow below. It’s what made them appear like a solid mass to her. 

With her staff firmly in one hand and the crossbow in the other, she dashes into the trees.

She’ll need to move quickly if she wants to lose Kylo. She’s not naive enough to believe he’ll rely on eyesight alone to find her, but she’s hoping this is another realm where her size will aid her over his bulk. She can slip through spaces he can’t, even if the undergrowth is unnervingly empty. Rey hasn’t been in a forest in years, but she remembers how much grew beneath trees: ferns and brambles and burgeoning shrubs. The ground beneath these trees is barren, her boots sinking into the loam as she pushes her way between them blindly. 

She is making her way uphill. Slowly. Too slowly. His powers prickle over her skin, but she knows what he’s trying to do now. She’s always been a fast learner; she can brace and push away when he tries to get a grip on her and pin her in place with his magic. 

She grits her teeth and throws that energy—what she can harness—back in his direction. It won’t hold him off for long, but she feels him stumble and fall back for a moment. Good. 

The canopy is blocking out even the moonlight and her night vision has never been very good. Behind her, she can hear Kylo’s pursuit—the cracking of twigs underfoot, his harsh breath—but she wouldn’t need her ears to know he still tracks her, his angry, roiling presence never easing.

Rey has just decided entering the woods was a mistake when she spots the gap in the treeline ahead, pushing for it while her lungs burn. 

She steps out into a clearing, and the gibbous moon emerges from behind a cloud, illuminating the world in ghostly white. What crowns the hill she’s climbing becomes visible: a stone tower. A keep, its windows dark and empty, its walls stark and in the process of being devoured by creeping plants. 

Her heart leaps into her throat. She’s never seen it before, but she knows what it is. She’s seen it in books, when she was a little girl and had access to such frivolities, ornately drawn portraits of Castle Alderaan. The former residence of the former royal family.

Now as good as ruined.

She won’t find refuge there, so turns to begin her descent back down the hill on the opposite side of the clearing to Kylo. Here the ground changes, rocky outcroppings rising from beneath the trees to threaten to trip her up. It slows her progress, and she needs to buy herself some time.

Kylo feels far enough behind her that she drops behind one of the boulders, crouching with the crossbow notched ready to fire. 

His footsteps give him away again; more broken twigs. She peers around the boulder to see his bulky outline bearing down on her position, and she pulls the trigger. 

The bow jerks upwards when she fires, sending the bolt high and sailing over his head. It makes him pause, hand held aloft.

She’s ready for him again, waiting for the pulse of his energy sweeping across her like a march of angry insects, pushing back against him and holding her own. He must know her location now, must have felt her own energy, and she fumbles to reload the crossbow as quickly as she can. She’s only ever used one infrequently, any she’d found in wreckage inevitably worth more to her when traded for food than being kept as a weapon. It means he’s almost upon her when she fires again.

At such close range she shouldn’t miss; there’s enough of his torso for the bolt to pierce his armor and shred some vital organ. But he sweeps the bolt aside so it only grazes his flank.

She tosses the crossbow away, switching to her staff. She uses it to try and sweep his feet out from under him, but he kicks it away instead, almost sending it flying out of her hands.

He follows that up with a nudge of magic, and only her own determined grip keeps the staff in her fists.

She uses it to propel herself around the boulder away from him, up, back to higher ground. The move requires risking her back, briefly, and when she turns to face him he’s nearly reached her.

He doesn’t flinch away from her next blow, pushing it back towards her with an easy pulse of his magic. It makes Rey stumble and almost trip over her feet. She snarls and parries again, only for him to block her in the same way. 

Her next move is fatal. She pivots the staff, intending to slam it upwards between his legs—a trick that had left many male scavengers vomiting and weeping for their mothers.

Instead, he grabs the end of the staff, yanking it upwards and pulling her off balance. She falls towards him, into his chest, and his arms close around her like iron bands. She hears the staff clatter to the ground and whimpers. 

He’s big. She’d known that when she saw him in Niima and in the carriage. But she hadn’t appreciated exactly  _ how _ big until she’s pressed against his torso like this. Her hands are trapped between them, pinned against the broad, defined muscles of his chest. She’s not short but her head can tuck under the helmet, and his shoulders feel twice as wide as hers. 

Underneath the armor, his body is densely muscled and without a weapon she has no chance of escaping his grip. With or without magic, she’s outmatched.

He doesn’t even have the grace to be panting, and she bites her lip to stem the threatening onslaught of tears. Tears will do her no good.

“I can knock you out again,” he tells her, in that awful, grating rasp, “or you can come with me quietly and there’ll be no punishment for this foolishness.”

His words should be dripping with annoyance or contempt, and yet that’s not what she hears, nor senses. There’s a note of—pride? Not just in his voice, but underneath that ever-present ire. Being this close to him should hurt—she should be overwhelmed with the heat of his rage, but instead being pressed up against him seems to quieten the effect and allow her to discern other emotions. All of them intense, and many she would struggle to name.

Rey knows when she is bested. She’ll not escape from him again. Better to go with him now, and keep her wits about her, and look for other opportunities. She knows the general lay of the land and that will be useful when she finds her way out of the fortress. 

Then again. She’s never known when to give in. 

“Punish me all you like,” she replies, proud of the way her voice doesn’t quaver when she says the words. Then she shoves hard at his chest, putting all her might and all that still-new ability he calls magic into it.

His arms loosen, but only long enough for him to swing her up, tossing her roughly over his shoulder so the upper half of her body dangles down his back and her legs are draped down his front. 

“Hey!” she protests as one of those steely arms traps her in place.

He ignores her and begins the trudge back through the trees, navigating the steep, rocky terrain like it’s nothing, even with her perched on his shoulder. His breathing remains deep and even, amplified by the mask and proximity to her ear. She beats on his back with her fists, and he doesn’t even pretend to flinch.

He can’t be human. That’s why he never takes the mask off—because underneath there’s not a normal face. Maybe the mask  _ is _ his face. He’d felt normal enough up close, warm and solid, but it’s not like Rey knows what a demon feels like to tell the difference.

“I thought you were going to knock me out or—or punish me. Not this.”

“Consider this your punishment.”

There’s no humor in his voice but she  _ thinks _ he just made a joke.

For all the running Rey did, they’re already back at the transport. The gates stand open, and as they pass through Rey catches sight of the driver leaning against the wall and rubbing his sore head. Rey would feel sorry, except he  _ is _ wearing that detestable uniform. It’s a deep gray that she’d think is black except it’s lighter than the shell of the transport. Snoke’s insignia is stitched onto the breast; a spiked wheel inside a hexagon. It’s identical even if you are dangling upside down.

The driver says nothing to Kylo but narrows his eyes at Rey. He looks like he’d spit in her direction, if there wasn’t every chance he’d also hit Kylo.

“You lost my crossbow, you little street rat?”

“It’s in the woods,” Kylo responds for her. “You can look for it in the morning.” He doesn’t break his stride, crossing the courtyard they’ve entered. Mention of the crossbow reminds Rey that she’s lost the only possession that she came here with.

“My staff!”

“Is a worthless piece of junk.”

“It is not, I—”

“There are other weapons more befitting a magic wielder. You’ll see.”

The ground is made up of endless flagstones, and Rey hears the grinding of the transport engine starting up again so it can be brought inside. She lifts her head to try and see around her, but for all that Snoke rapaciously funnels the kingdom’s wealth into his coffers, precious little of it seems to be spent on lighting. The squat buildings, built in the same grim stone as the walls, look like they might be stables. Kylo does not head for them. Instead they’ve reached a set of wide stairs, heading up them towards what Rey can only presume are the doors to the fortress.

Kylo halts at the top of the stairs. His shadow spills down behind him, distorted by their shape, outlined in the glow from the doors. At least there’s light inside. She hopes warmth too. Being surrounded by all this stone has started to creep into Rey’s bones, a chill edging in now that her sweat has had time to cool. Only Kylo’s body heat is keeping her from shivering.

“What the blazes do you have there, Ren?” The woman’s voice is clipped and powerful, but filtered through the distortion of a mask. Her accent isn’t dissimilar to Rey’s own—from somewhere in the east of the kingdom.

“Our newest recruit,” Kylo replies.

“She doesn’t look like much of a recruit.”

“That’s for the Emperor to decide.”

“Then I suggest you don’t present her to him looking like that. She’s more urchin than Imperial Guard.”

“Oi!” Rey protests, out of principle rather than true indignation.

“Well volunteered, Phasma.”

Kylo crosses the threshold and begins to pace down a corridor. More stone surrounds them, and the expected warmth is not forthcoming. Rey can see a pair of legs following them, clad in shining chrome armor. Impractical. But enough to pay for several weeks’ worth of rations.

“Me?” The woman says, her contemptuous voice echoing around them. She must be the one in the armor. “Certainly not. I am not a maid.”

“No, but you do need to obey my orders. And you’re the only woman here with the power to restrain her. I can’t do it myself.”

Rey tries to keep track of the turns they take, but it’s dizzying trying to do it upside down. Or perhaps being upside down for so long is dizzying in itself.

They swing through a set of doors into a room that is warm—swelteringly so, and humid too. She recognizes the air of a bathhouse. Rey is dumped back onto her feet, stumbling so she lands on her backside. Hard. Before she can push herself up, Kylo has procured a rope and begun to bind it around her wrists.

“Let me go!” she objects, attempting to writhe away, but his grip is tight and his fingers nimble, and she’s trussed within seconds.

Kylo speaks to Phasma, who Rey is now able to see is clad entirely in that chrome armor, with a matching helmet Rey can see her own reflection in. She doesn’t carry a sword like Kylo. Instead a long, sleek rifle hangs at her hip. 

“You get her clean, I’ll make arrangements to have her presented.”

Rey snarls and attempts to grab for Kylo’s ankles, but he sidesteps her.

“And I’d be wary of your armor,” he tells Phasma. “No doubt she’d sell it down in Coruscant for a rusted pistol and some moss chips.” Then he sweeps out of the room, the door firmly closed behind him.

Phasma’s helmet tips in her direction and Rey can feel her appraising stare even through the metal. “Feral thing, aren’t you?”

“Kriff off.” Rey pushes herself to her knees, struggling to get upright, and a firm hand on her shoulder shoves her back down.

“Feral, but powerful. Yes, I can feel it too. Hux will be most interested in you. As for the Emperor…” She shakes her head. “Lusica, Peera, come here!”

Two girls, younger than Rey and clad in dark uniforms that are almost as ragged as Rey’s own garments, come scuttling through another door.

“Strip her and fill the tub,” Phasma commands them. “Get her scrubbed clean.”

“No!”

The girls don’t look at her, dipping into twin curtseys and silently opting to fetch steaming water to pour into the waiting bathtub first. The tub is made of porcelain—not like the rickety steel buckets in Niima—and far bigger too. It’s set into the floor before the roaring hearth, which is tall enough for Rey to step into, if she were daft enough to do such a thing. 

With the tub full, the two girls approach Rey and she doesn’t put up a fight as they begin to pull off her boots. They’re skinny things who seem to have as much luck with food as she does, their hands hardened by callouses, and their fear of Phasma palpable. Rey won’t lash out against creatures more pathetic than she is, even if she tries to shield herself as they unravel each layer of her clothing, right down to her breast band and underwear.

They help her into the water, as gently as they are able, and Rey can’t deny that the hot water feels good against her sore muscles. The water is unscented and clear. She’s submerged to her ribs, and keeps her knees drawn to her chest. It’s not that she’s not used to being nude around strangers when she’s bathing—there’s no privacy in a public bathhouse, even if Unkar Plutt always kept the rooms separated by the various genders, but Rey’s hands had never been bound when she washed, and her staff had always been nearby. Like this, she feels more vulnerable than ever.

One of the girls grabs a bar of lavender soap and a washcloth, and the other begins trying to untangle the buns in Rey’s hair. That, she does resist, yelping every time the girl pulls too hard at a knot. But she catches the pleading gaze of the girl with the soap, begging Rey to behave with her eyes. 

She does. Or at least she tries to.

So her hair is let down, wetted, shampooed and combed. Every inch of her body is scrubbed down, even the places that make her squirm and blush. She hasn’t been this clean in years, not when soap was such a scarce commodity. Even her nails are scoured. 

Meanwhile, Phasma tries to entertain herself.

“I don’t suppose you have a name, little scavenger?”

Rey doesn’t want to play this game again. “No. My parents never named me,” she taunts.

Phasma lets out a sharp laugh. “I’m amazed you even have parents. Or had? Yes, definitely had, or you wouldn’t be such a ferocious wee thing. I gather Ren found you during his mission in Jakku. A scavenger. Interesting.”

Rey replies with nothing except a dirty look.

“Yet you don’t sound like you’re from Jakku,” Phasma muses.

Rey tries not to stiffen at Phasma’s train of thought. Rey hadn’t been born in Jakku, of course, but it wouldn’t help for Phasma to figure out where she’d spent her early years, or who her parents had been…

“Nobody’s actually from Jakku,” she replies, trying to sound as contemptuous as Phasma does in her every word.

“No, I suppose not.” But Rey can’t shake the feeling that she’s being scrutinized. Phasma isn’t looking at her body, though—she wants something else. Rey’s secrets.

She can’t have them.

Another girl comes through with a pile of clothes and places them on a chair next to the tub. A large towel—big enough to drape down to Rey’s knees—is held out for her to step into. She pushes herself up out of the water and onto the mat before the fire, letting herself be wrapped up and rubbed dry, then helped into the garments that have been brought for her. Simple gray leggings and a tunic—not a uniform—and they have to unbind her hands to manage it.

Phasma keeps her gripped by the wrist in a way that feels like it would shatter bones if Rey tried anything. She has a presence as tangible as Kylo’s, yet completely different. Where he is fire, she is ice, a cloud of frost enveloping Rey.

When Phasma loops the rope back around Rey’s wrists, it’s tighter even than Kylo had fixed it.

Rey has to put her old boots back on. They look filthy in comparison to the leggings, which smell freshly laundered. And finally, her hair is loosely styled, the top layer tied back to keep it out of her eyes. Rey doubts either of the girls would know how to arrange her buns, and she can’t do it with her hands strung together like this. It leaves her damp hair resting against her neck. She doesn’t like it.

“I suppose she’ll do,” Phasma says derisively after one last inspection of Rey’s form. Then she marches Rey back out into the corridor, the butt of the rifle digging into Rey’s back. 

The sudden chill outside of the bathing room has goosebumps erupting on Rey’s bare arms. Wherever they are now, it seems to be deep into the fortress. The doors to the outside world are nowhere in sight, and there are no windows in the corridor, which has barren walls built of sooty basalt. With every step they take, Rey hates the place more.

Kylo had said she would be presented. She knows who that must be to, and she can think of nothing she’d rather do less than be paraded in front of Snoke so he can decide whether she deserves to live. But Rey has bound hands, no weapons, and a rifle trained on her. She’s little experience of firearms, beyond knowing the old ones found in wreckage were volatile and likely to explode without careful handling. She doubts the one aimed at her is any safer.

They turn a corner onto a wider hallway, one which leads to a set of ornate metal doors. Kylo is stationed outside them, hands clasped in front of him. His mask turns slowly in their direction at the sounds of their footsteps, and Rey can feel his appraising stare sweeping up and down her even if his head doesn’t move beyond that turn.

Kylo’s energy is even more unstable and prickly than normal, and Rey flinches from it when Phasma shoves her forward to stand beside him.

“That is all,” Kylo tells Phasma dismissively.

“Oh no,” Phasma replies. “I absolutely intend to witness this.”

He doesn’t sigh, though he may as well. Instead he places his hand at the small of Rey’s back, steering her around to face the door. It’s not that she’s obeying him, as much as trying to get away from his touch and that angry march of prickles down her spine.

She takes a deep breath, trying to ease her shoulders and center herself. Kylo raps on the doors and they begin to ease open inwardly.

The room reveals itself slowly, shadows hanging like a cloud over everything. It’s easily as big as the marketplace in Niima despite being mostly empty, and the fireplaces set into the walls do little to overcome the sour, drafty air. Rey shivers as Kylo takes her by the arm and pulls her forwards, suddenly thankful for his furious heat even as a new presence makes itself known at the edge of her awareness. One that is neither as fiery as Kylo’s nor frosty as Phasma’s. 

She recoils from it all the same.

Once, in Jakku, she’d found the mummified remains of a soldier inside the cockpit of a war engine. Bones were nothing new in the desert, and Rey had learned to pretend any she came across were animal bones unless there was absolute evidence to confirm they were human. Otherwise, they were worth scavenging and taking back to Unkar because people had their ways of turning bone into useful tools. 

The mummy had been different. Dessicated and sunken, leathery skin clinging to the skeleton, shriveled eyes staring at nothing. The air around it had felt parched and stale, like all the good in it had been sucked away. Rey had felt trapped, breath catching in her lungs as if she would be suffocated by its mere presence, and she’d scrambled out of the cockpit as fast as she could despite the presence of good scrap. Now, she wonders if her magic had allowed her to taste a flash of that eerie decay in ways other scavengers couldn’t—not the ones who’d laughed at her fear and gone back to pick the corpse clean of its valuables.

Worse, she feels that way again now. Like her lungs are struggling to fill, because the air is dry and oppressive. More than that, it’s hungry; empty and searching for whatever it can find to feed itself. She will wither just from standing here, as the room around her blooms with that awful, creeping rot.

She knows the source of it. Its path leads directly across the room, to an obsidian dais which rises above the polished floor. Atop the dais sits a throne, as black as the stone it rests upon, and in the throne lounges a man. For a moment Rey thinks she’s looking at that long-gone mummy again, he is so wizened, and it’s not age that’s made him so. Something else has caused this atrophy. 

He must be tall—even spindly—his long fingers clutching the arms of the throne and reminding her of spider’s legs. His pitted head is bald and bisected by a crater of scar tissue, its sunken effect exacerbated by the way the twin torches behind the throne cast light and shade across him. In the middle of all that marred skin, a pair of pale eyes gaze out keenly across the room. They’re the most ordinary thing about him and yet the most unnerving.

Emperor Snoke.

Rey has never seen a picture of him, but who else would be sat on the throne, wrapped in an ostentatious golden robe?

She doesn’t want to get any closer but Kylo keeps dragging her along, right to the foot of the dais where Rey trips and lands on her knees. Kylo’s hand on her shoulder keeps her down and he dips into a bow beside her, lowering to one knee. 

Beside the dais, a pale man in a pristine uniform stands at attention. He has coiffed red hair and an expression like somebody has placed a bowl of sour milk under his nose. He’s not a soldier or a guard, not with that hair, so she can only guess he’s some kind of attendant to the emperor. A rattle from behind them confirms that Phasma has followed them in. Phasma moves to stand on the opposite side of the dais to the red-haired man.

Snoke peers down at Rey. “What have we here?”

His voice is as curdled as the rest of him, brittle and raspy, like fingers of decay creeping across the room.

Kylo raises his face towards Snoke, still vibrating with that restless aura. “I found her, my lord.” He begins to rise back to his feet. “In Jakku. She was strong enough to fight off my knights and—”

Something shoves Kylo down beside Rey; a great pressure that knocks Rey forwards. 

“Did I say you could get up?” Snoke barks. 

Kylo is still, fists clenched and head bowed but outwardly unresponsive. Only the inferno inside him betrays his ire. 

“Now,” Snoke continues, “how could a scrawny thing like that fight off your knights?”

“She is powerful, my lord. Full of magical ability.”

“Really? Hmm.” Snoke taps his bony fingers against the throne, leaning forwards to peer at Rey. His smile is more of a fissure that splits his face. There’s no humor in it and plenty of menace. She wants to scowl back at him but finds her insides have turned to water. “I believe I had made it clear that all magic users are to be eliminated. Was I not clear, Hux?”

The red-haired man shoots a disdainful glance at Rey. Then his gaze cuts to Kylo, and a hint of pleasure flickers across his face. Vicious, sadistic pleasure. “No, my lord. You were exceptionally clear in your instructions, as ever.” His words are as clipped as Phasma’s.

“As I suspected. So I am puzzled, Ren, as to why you appear to have brought this pathetic stray to my feet.”

Kylo straightens. “My lord, she is untrained. Undisciplined. Despite that, she was able to best my knights—only I was able to quell her. She would be a powerful addition to your retinue. Possibly the strongest of us all and full of anger.”

Snoke’s attention is on Kylo when he replies. “Yes, I can feel that.”

Rey can feel it too—Snoke’s rotten presence scraping at the edges of her being, tasting her. Her stomach roils in protest and threatens to toss up the food she’d eaten in the carriage.

“Allow me to train her,” Kylo continues. “Allow me to use that anger and shape her into the weapon she is meant to be.”

“Are you so eager for a replacement, my young apprentice? Do you hope to train her to fill your void and escape me at the end of her blade when she surpasses you?”

Kylo is silent.

“Though you forget what I can see. Yes, there is anger inside her. But so much compassion too, and a fiery spit of hope. Odd, for one who’s led such a hard life.”

Rey has a moment of sheer blind panic when she realizes that Snoke has been able to discern that much from her. She hadn’t known somebody could read minds like that—she tries to wipe hers clean, pushing at his awful, stale presence.  _ Get out! _

Snoke gasps and sits upright on the throne. “Oh, but she is good.” It’s a purr, one that finds the spot between Rey’s shoulder blades and has her shuddering in disgust. “Plenty of promise despite her weaknesses. Perhaps we should demonstrate what she can look forward to if I grant your heartfelt desire, Ren?”

Kylo hasn’t moved, like he’s become part of the stone. Though Snoke’s words contain a barb in them, Rey struggles to understand it.

“Hux, have the rest of the Guard returned from their mission in Jakku?”

“Their transport arrived shortly after Ren’s, my lord.”

“Excellent. Have them sent in.”

Kylo shifts uneasily. Even without that sign, Rey’s instincts are screaming at her that something bad is about to happen. Hux summons a silent underling from the gloomy corner of the room, and whispers in their ear before sending them away. Rey tracks their exit through a side door from the corner of her eye.

“While we wait, we ought to discuss how your little errand to Jakku went. I assume that infernal rat of a Resistance leader is now food for the vultures?”

The pause stretches on too long before Kylo answers. “I am not sure, my lord. The Guard may know, but I had—other priorities.”

“Other priorities.” Snoke steeples his fingers together so he can rest his chin on them as he leans forwards once more. “How interesting.”

He knows. Somehow, he already knew what had happened in Niima without waiting for Kylo’s report.

“My lord—”

“Silence,” he hisses, and Kylo obeys. Snoke glances behind them, and a fresh draft gusts through the room as the doors open once more, making the fires gutter and flare in their hearths.

Rey sneaks a glance over her shoulder to find the five knights from the marketplace striding down the path towards the dais. They have none of the caution they ought to and come to rest a few feet away, remaining upright rather than taking a knee. Their energies blur together, not as palpable as Kylo’s but carrying the same flavor of rage and violence. It tastes like hot metal singeing the back of her throat.

Snoke crooks a finger at the one in the middle. He has a hood drawn up over his all-black mask, and a fat blade at each hip that look closer to meat cleavers than swords. One long as his thigh, one almost a square. “Did you find Kanata’s body in what was left of Niima?”

“No. She’s too wily, that one. Long gone. But we’ve sent out more men to scour the kingdom. She won’t get far, my lord.”

“I see.” Snoke pauses. “Trudgen. You have been a good, loyal servant of mine these many years, have you not?”

“I have, my lord.” He isn’t wary of Snoke’s question. Instead he sounds proud of his answer.

“And you consider yourself close to Kylo Ren?”

Trudgen dips his head slightly to the side. “We have trained together for over a decade. I consider him my brother.”

There was a trap in that question somewhere. Rey felt it, even if this idiot couldn’t see it. Judging by the sly smirk Snoke breaks into, Trudgen has walked right into it.

“Very well. I’ve decided the pair of you should fight to the death.” He relishes the words as he says them.

The silence that follows is the sound of the trap closing around them. “My—my lord?” Trudgen asks.

Kylo says nothing, nor does he lift his head. Rey thinks he’s known something like this was going to happen all along. At least since Snoke summoned the Guard.

“You heard me. I command you to fight Ren. No magic. Whoever survives wins.” 

“ _ Now? _ ”

“Yes, Trudgen. Now. That is an order.”

The other knights back away to the edges of the room, leaving Trudgen staring down at the back of a still kneeling Kylo. 

“Ren?” he asks, like he’s waiting for the punchline to the joke.

“We failed,” Kylo tells him solemnly, without looking over his shoulder.

“The mission isn’t over! We’re still—”

He doesn’t get to finish his sentence. Kylo has spun and risen to his feet in one fluid move, delivering a blow to Trudgen’s guts with his enormous fist. While Trudgen doubles over, Kylo draws his sword and swings.

Trudgen blocks the blow, but barely. The cleaver he’s using is left dinted by Kylo’s blade. It’s not a weapon used for parrying like this, but for delivering cuts to the undefended. His one advantage is that he has two of them, one in each hand, and he and Kylo begin to circle each other on the empty floor.

Rey doesn’t want to watch, but finds herself transfixed anyway, barely breathing as they launch into the fight. Kylo’s sword gives him the longer range and he’s able to make jabs towards Trudgen without getting too close. Trudgen is adept at blocking his movements, using one of the cleavers as a kind of shield, but it isn’t meant for that and grows increasingly battered. 

Trudgen makes swings of his own, but Kylo spins out of reach and knocks them back like they’re nothing. The two men seem similar in size, but Kylo is broader and his movements more sure, brutal thrusts delivered with so much force yet at his apparent ease. Each clash of metal rings around the room and Trudgen grunts whenever he takes the brunt of a blow on his makeshift shield. But Kylo is silent. It looks like his brute force will make this an easy match.

Rey should be glad of that. If he loses, she’s sure to die next.

It seems Trudgen realizes that strength isn’t going to win this for him. At Kylo’s next downward stroke, he feints, dodging towards Kylo’s left side before swinging to the right.

Rey’s shriek catches in her throat.

The cleaver grazes Kylo’s ribs, but he’s surprisingly light-footed, dipping backwards at the last moment. Then he spins, using the momentum to hack downwards at the arm holding the other cleaver—the one being used as a shield.

Trudgen howls, cleaver and forearm dropping to the floor as blood spurts from the wound. 

Kylo kicks them out of the way and goes in for the kill, but Trudgen manages to sink the remaining blade into the meat of Kylo’s thigh. Kylo grunts and kicks him away with his good leg, and the pair face each other for a moment, chests heaving and blood dripping from their wounds to form small puddles on the stone beneath their feet.

The blood loss will get them if nothing else will. Kylo is favoring one leg and Trudgen’s remaining arm is trembling. Rey is terrified of what will come next. She’s witnessed fights in Niima—even ones that ended in death, brawls over portions and scrap going too far—but none as cold-blooded as this.

Trudgen aims first, carelessly swinging the cleaver towards Kylo’s torso, and Kylo blocks it with just as little effort.

The second their blades touch, Trudgen kicks Kylo in his weak leg. Kylo goes down, barely managing to keep the sword up to bar the cleaver from slipping towards his throat. Instead, Trudgen raises his weapon, ready to swing for Kylo’s neck and end the fight.

Kylo shoves his sword into Trudgen’s guts. And twists. And twists.

The other man drops to his knees, the cleaver falling from his fingers as he clutches at his belly instead. He rolls onto his back and writhes; air rattles from his lungs, and awful groans rip from his throat. Rey sees pink loops hanging between his fingers, and the ripe stench of an outhouse fills the air. 

Kylo mutters something as Trudgen’s body twitches on the floor, his blood pooling around them both, viscous and black. Rey is almost close enough to hear what he says, and if she didn’t know better, she’d think it was an “I’m sorry.” But that can’t be right.

Kylo forces himself back to his feet, even though blood continues to ooze down his breeches. With one final stroke, he decapitates Trudgen, his red sword biting into the floor. He kicks at Trudgen’s helmet; the head rolls away and comes to a stop near Hux’s feet. Hux’s disgusted expression morphs into outright queasiness.

The pressure of the other knights’ uneasiness builds. Rey discovers she’s panting, and though her stomach is in knots, she no longer wants to throw up. Pass out, maybe. Kylo Ren is every bit as brutal and dangerous as the stories said he was.

“Clean that mess up,” Snoke snarls. 

Kylo turns to face the throne again, still putting all his weight onto one leg. He tears a strip of cloth from his cape and winds it around his upper thigh to stem the blood flow. The wound certainly needs more treatment than that, but nobody seems inclined to address that matter, although several servants come rushing in to remove the body and start mopping at the floor.

To Rey’s horror, Snoke’s attention turns to her once more.

“You see, he obeys me in all things,” he says, casually, as if he hasn’t just witnessed one of his Guard being butchered in front of him. “Even if it means slaughtering one of his own men. Isn’t that right, Ren?”

Kylo dips his head in a shallow nod. “I won,” he points out. “Does this mean I have earned the right to train her?”

Snoke laughs, and it’s a horrible sound, guttural and cold. “You were always going to win, Ren. That was the point.”

Kylo’s hands ball into fists once more but he doesn’t reply. Rey realizes this was all for her, a show of exactly how barbaric life in the fortress is. She doesn’t want this. Anything has to be better than this—being the apprentice of the demon who’d just sliced apart one of his comrades because he was told to.

“I suppose I am now down one Guard. She easily outmatches Trudgen in terms of power and, with time, skill. She’d be a fine addition to your retinue. Nevertheless, she has contempt for me. A contempt almost stronger than her fear. I can see it in her.”

“I am  _ right _ here,” she says, finally finding her voice.

Snoke chuckles. “Oh, does the little rat speak?” He extends one long, bony finger in her direction. “Would you like to tell Ren how much contempt you have for him, too? How you’d rather fight him to the death and die by his sword than submit to him as your master? It’s probably a wise choice, or at least as wise as one you can make.” 

That uncanny smile returns to his face, bringing a chill with it Rey feels in her bones.

"What do you think? Another round? He's wounded; I think you could take him.” The smile drops. “Nevertheless, we don't always get what we want, young Rey. Trudgen wanted to live, so he had to die. You want to die...and so you shall live." 

Kylo's head snaps up. 

"You may have your apprentice, Ren. I expect results."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The violent section starts with "While Trudgen doubles over, Kylo draws his sword and swings." and ends with "The pressure of the other knights’ uneasiness builds."
> 
> Kylo and Trudgen fight - they each manage to wound each other but Kylo is victorious and kills Trudgen, although he has a deep wound to his thigh.
> 
> I'll be back in two weeks with a less violent chapter, back in Kylo's head! Follow me on [Tumblr](https://cellar-darlings.tumblr.com/) for a teaser for chapter four on May 24th.


	5. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo is barely staying upright when Snoke gives the order.
> 
> He’s lost too much blood, though he’s lucky that Trudgen’s hatchet missed the artery, and the tourniquet Kylo applied to himself has helped stem the flow. 
> 
> He’d won. He’d won, killing Trudgen, the man he’d known longest out of every being in the fortress except for Snoke himself. He’d had no choice and it gave him no joy, but the victory ought to mean something.
> 
> Not to Snoke. There is no victory under Snoke. Only pain, and loss, and punishment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! I'm happy you all seem to be enjoying the story so far and liked chapter three even if it was a little...intense. This chapter is not as graphic but still has mentions of the injury Kylo sustained in the previous chapter, as well as descriptions of mental torture, so fair warning. They're not too involved but they are there.

Kylo is barely staying upright when Snoke gives the order.

He’s lost too much blood, though he’s lucky that Trudgen’s hatchet missed the artery, and the tourniquet Kylo applied to himself has helped stem the flow. 

He’d won. He’d won, killing Trudgen, the man he’d known longest out of every being in the fortress except for Snoke himself. He’d had no choice and it gave him no joy, but the victory ought to mean something.

Not to Snoke. There is no victory under Snoke. Only pain, and loss, and punishment.

He’s given Kylo what he wanted, but only after finding a way to make it hurt, creating a wound and then rubbing salt into it. Trudgen is dead, and Snoke has made it clear how Rey sees him. The victory is sour in his stomach.

He busies himself wiping his sword clean on his cape, and sheathing it at his hip.

_ “No!” _

The unexpected shout comes from Rey herself, still on her knees before the throne. Every face in the room turns towards her.

“No—I refuse,” she spits at Snoke. “You might as well kill me because I’m not staying here.”

She manages to shove herself to her feet, staggering towards Hux before anybody reacts. Kylo finds himself frozen, watching the twist of terror on Hux’s face as she gets close, and it’s ridiculous—Hux is scared of this small, bound, weaponless woman. Hux manages to school his expression back into its normal mask of contempt quickly enough but Kylo relishes that moment of weakness in Hux, delighted that Rey caused it. She’s feisty, indignant—magnificent.

And yelling at Hux. 

“What are you looking at, you ugly piece of—”

Snoke cackles and shoves Rey back down to her knees with a blow of power.

“As entertaining as this is,” he croons, leering at her, “you’ll not find anybody here who’ll go against my direct instructions to keep you alive.” His cold stare flicks across to Kylo. “Get her out of here!”

Kylo limps forwards, grabbing Rey by the forearm once more and hauling her to her feet. Nobody can see the grimace he makes, or feel the effort it takes him. Nobody must know his weaknesses. Except for Snoke, who knows all of them. He’d even been able to see beyond Kylo’s pathetic attempts at persuasion to understand why he’d wanted to train the girl.

Kylo’s a fool. He’s known this truth about himself for years, but it never stops feeling like a dagger to the chest when he’s reminded of it.

_ “Would you like to tell Ren how much contempt you have for him, too? How you’d rather fight him to the death and die by his sword than submit to him as your master?” _

He begins to drag Rey away, and she resists, digging in her heels and starting to scream. Unfortunately for her, the floor is still slick with Trudgen’s blood and she easily slides as he pulls her along. As for her screams—he’s heard worse. A coldness settles around him, his ears ringing. Perhaps it’s the blood loss. 

“And shut her up,” Snoke demands. “I can’t be doing with that infernal racket.”

With a gesture of his hand, Kylo silences Rey, her voice swallowed by the air around her. She can continue to scream all she likes, but it doesn’t make a sound. She turns those fierce eyes to him when she realizes, her mouth forming curses and insults he can’t hear but can lipread very clearly.

Nobody follows him, which amazes him. He expected Hux to come trotting behind, taunting him for this latest debacle. Or for Phasma to stroll after them and demand to know why she’d had to bathe the girl for this. But he supposes Snoke still has his uses for Hux, and Phasma wouldn’t want to get blood on her shiny armor. And the Guard—the Guard will want to lick their wounds alone. Trudgen’s loss will be felt keenly, and the men were always more of a unit without Kylo than with him.

“You,” Kylo commands an attending servant who is on the outside of the doors. “Prepare the room next to mine. Notify me when it’s ready.”

The man bows low and nods, scurrying off to carry out Kylo’s orders. Rey tries to twist free of Kylo’s grip and he pulls her flush against his torso.

“Behave,” he grunts. “You’re not going to die tonight, but you can still be punished.”

Up close, her hair smells sweet. All of her smells sweet and clean, like soap and lavender and sunshine. He has to step back before his head starts spinning and he tries to bury his face against her skin—much good it would do him in the mask.

He’d been astonished at the change when Phasma had presented her to him, her hair out of those ridiculous buns and falling softly against her neck. Some of it remains tied back, leaving her youthful face clear, but two wisps curl in front of her ears. Sadly, her skin is paler than it was earlier, clammy and wan. The look on her eyes suggests she’s somewhere between nauseated and furious. 

To his relief, she stops resisting. For once, Kylo is thankful for all of Snoke’s training; he can endure pain and channel it into productivity. They make quick progress down the corridor and through another set of doors into a quieter passage, an older part of the fortress. One of the buildings that had once sat outside the castle moat, before being swallowed up in the construction of Snoke’s own residence. 

There’s very little down here. Which is how Kylo likes it. Most people with any choice in the matter have jostled for rooms close to Snoke’s chambers and the throne room. Kylo instead chose to be in this isolated corner of the complex, close enough to slip out to the stables or training arena but sufficiently far away to dull the pressure of Snoke’s presence. It gives him some semblance of rest.

Rey is trying to say something more but Kylo has no idea what it is. He removes the silencing spell so she can talk.

“Where are you taking me?” she hisses in quiet fury.

He halts abruptly in front of an unassuming iron door, one without a visible handle or means of entry. The door only responds to his own energy signature, the lock clicking open and the thick metal sheet creaking inwards when he presses against it.

His cell is dark inside and he takes a moment to light the torches with a snap of his fingers. Rey jumps at the sudden brightness, then flinches again when the door slams behind them.

“Here, for now,” he replies, and watches her eyes widen as she takes in the content of the room.

It’s tiny. Windowless. He has no need for anything more than the narrow cot in one corner, a wooden chair, and the chest which houses his weapons, armor, and other scant belongings. On top of the chest there’s a basin, and a pump handle juts from the wall which he can use to obtain water. When he wants hot water, he has to heat it up in the fireplace, which currently lies dark. The alternative is to allow servants to fetch it for him and bring it inside, and he’ll never do that. None but him set foot in here.

Except, apparently, for Rey. It’s been quite a day.

So his quarters are sparse and bare. No rug on the floor, no tapestries on the walls, nothing but gray stone. A far cry from the days of his youth. The cot dominates the space, and Rey’s panicked stare is fixed on it.

“What do you intend to do?”

She’s braced for a fight, and he can only huff in exhaustion. As if he has the energy to even contemplate doing what she’s thinking of.

“I’m going to tend to my wound, and then I’ll take you to your own room.”

Then it occurs to him exactly how he’s going to have to deal with his wound, and how vulnerable it will leave him—in all kinds of ways.

Distracting her by setting the fireplace blazing with a motion of his hand, he grabs her with the other, spinning her around to face the door. There’s a hook on the back of it he normally uses to hang up his cape, and he loops the rope binding her hands together over it. 

“Hey!”

She’s left on tiptoe leaning against the door, unable to twist around and face the room.

“I need privacy,” he mutters.

She twists and wriggles but the rope holds firm, and so long as he stays out of her eyeline she won’t be able to see anything scandalous.

He fills the basin from the pump and when it’s full, begins to delicately strip off his gloves, boots and breeches. The soles of the boots are caked in dried blood, which he knows he’s tracked back to the cell. He’ll have a servant clean and polish them tomorrow.

The breeches are a more difficult prospect, stuck to his skin as they are. First he unwinds the tourniquet, glad to see that his blood now oozes out slowly from the wound. He has to retrieve a dagger from his chest to slice away at the leather and peel it free.

He’s as quiet as he can be, grinding his teeth together to keep his moaning to a minimum, but the noises agitate Rey anyway. “What are you  _ doing _ ?”

“Nothing that I’m enjoying.”

That task achieved, he takes the blade and sets it on the rack on the fireplace, using a clean washrag to start and clear the blood from his leg. The cold water stings like hell, but at least he knows it comes from the pure wells below the fortress and he isn’t risking infection.

He doesn’t want to look, but he must. The cut is clean, and deeper than he’d like—though he’d prefer no depth at all. He can’t see bone; if he did he’d need to find a real healer. He was lucky that Trudgen’s aim was so poor. 

_ He shouldn’t have been able to wound you at all. _

Snoke’s voice, always in the back of his head, always taunting him for his failures.

Kylo should have guessed that the fight was a test. Everything was a test with Snoke; he just hadn’t anticipated that Snoke expected him to win. He’d thought himself beyond caring, but at the first sign of interest in something in years, Snoke had sniffed it out and twisted it against him.

But orders were orders, and Kylo had been forced to beat the other man just to save his own skin. It wasn’t the first time and likely wouldn’t be the last. Only Kylo is guaranteed a long life in Snoke’s court. That’s not even because his misery is a source of endless amusement to Snoke.

It’s why Kylo doesn’t get attached to the rest of Snoke’s retinue. Even if he liked any of them—and he doesn’t—Snoke’s capricious nature is no guarantee they’ll survive long enough to become a true ally. The rest of the Guard is a unit, even friendly towards each other, but sooner or later Snoke will have Kylo kill them for their failures. It wasn’t like he’d even liked Trudgen, but it had given him no pleasure all the same.

Nothing gives him pleasure.

The dagger above the fire is beginning to glow. He wraps the hilt in one end of his cloak, and presses the blade to the wound.

He tries to keep his teeth clamped together but that doesn’t stop the fractured scream from slipping loose, deepened and warped by the mask.

Rey frantically yanks at her bound hands. “Why are you making that noise?” She gags. “ _ Kriff _ , what is that smell?”

The smell is his charred flesh, like pork cooked too long. He removes the blade and waits a second before applying it again.

“I am…cauterizing…my wound,” he tells her around gritted teeth, panting between bursts of heat.

When the blood has stopped, he lets go of the dagger with a shaking fist. Only one thing left to do, and that’s apply the bacta poultice. He retrieves that from a drawer in the chest, thankful he always has some made up, ready for the steady supply of wounds Snoke ensures he has.

This is Kylo’s special recipe, taking a simple poultice and adding other ingredients he’d read about in his research. It works, if not miracles, then as close to healing magic as he has ever encountered. Even if it stings like the bite of a cat o’ nine tails as he applies it.

“I hope it hurts,” Rey says.

Kylo waits for the sting to subside before replying. “That’s a harsh thing to say to the man who’s saved your life twice today.”

“You mean the man who took me prisoner twice today.”

“I’ve already explained why. It was this or allowing the Guard to kill you in Niima. So you’re welcome.”

“Why would I thank you for bringing me  _ here? _ It’s awful—you’re all awful.”

“Worse than Jakku?” He finds that hard to believe. 

“Yes. And you’re the worst of all.”

Now, Kylo knows that isn’t true. Not now she’s met Snoke. “It was for your own safety.”

“I escaped! If you’d have let me go instead of chasing me—”

“—You’d have been hunted down like a dog. Not by my orders; Snoke wouldn’t have permitted you to remain alive and free. And you know so little magic, you’d be completely incapable of hiding yourself. All I had to do was follow your signature and I found you.”

Rey is silent as she contemplates this.Satisfied he’s not going to lose his leg, Kylo winds a clean bandage around the meat of his thigh, then finds a pair of clean breeches. Linen rather than leather, to allow the wound to breathe and so the cloth doesn’t press as heavily against it. He catches sight of his tattered cape and shrugs that off too, using it to bundle up the scraps of his old pair. He tosses the sodden washcloth into the fireplace and dons his gloves. Fully hidden beneath his armor once again.

“So I couldn’t escape because you’d have found me,” Rey finally mutters.

“Easily. At least here you will learn enough to protect yourself from other magic users.” Or at least, that’s Kylo’s intention. Whether he’s successful remains to be seen.

A tap at the door announces Rey’s room is ready. She’s still squirming on the hook and she tenses when he crosses the floor to release her.

“Am I going to be trussed up like this all the time?” she asks.

“That depends on you.” 

But despite his words, he grabs the dagger from the top of the chest, and slices through the rope binding her wrists. He shoves the blade into his boot before she gets any ideas about going for it. Instead, she rubs at her wrists and spins her hands, like she’s trying to get the blood flowing again. Phasma has left welts in the soft skin. 

“Come with me,” he says, careful to hold her by the upper arm as he steers her back into the hallway. She casts a curious glance at the door when he seals it behind them, and trudges alongside him as they make the brief walk to the next room.

The servants have got her fireplace roaring so when they step inside it’s a pleasant warmth, one Rey shivers into. This cell is a mirror image of his own, and the cot has been freshly made up. He pauses in the middle of the room, releasing her awkwardly. 

“Do you want food?”

She peers around. “I’ve already eaten today.”

That’s not a real answer. “You should eat. Training will take a lot of energy.”

She shrugs, as if nonchalant at the prospect of more food, though he doesn’t miss the glint of eagerness in her eyes.

“Very well. I’ll arrange for some to be brought. Then you should rest.”

She chews her lip, deep in thought. “Did you know?”

“Did I know what?”

“That bringing me here and letting Maz go was going to lead to that—” she flaps her hands in the general direction of the throne room “—that fight?”

“Did I know that the Emperor would punish me?”

“Yes.”

“It was a risk,” he tells her truthfully. “The Emperor is unpredictable and takes great delight in punishing those beneath him. You would do well to remember that.”

“Then why? Why go against your mission and bring me here? Why not kill me in Niima if you thought you’d be punished for it?”

In the silence that follows, Kylo ponders the same question. It’s not easy when she’s staring up at him—her eyes are a hard color to determine; in the torchlight they’re a molten amber—and he knows, deep down, that the fact he’s fixating on  _ that _ is the answer to her question.

He doesn’t like it. It makes him feel dizzy in a way that has nothing to do with blood loss, like the ground has fallen away from under him abruptly and he’s falling through a vast chasm. Something might stop his fall, but it won’t be pleasant.

Worse, he doesn’t think he’d stop his fall even if he could. Not when she licks her lips and clears her throat, drawing his attention to both. Despite the way that she is still tense with fear around him, and in her eyes he can see himself reflected—the black void of his mask. He is a demon to her. Nothing more, nothing less.

He could tell her he saved her life because he couldn’t imagine the world without her in it. He could say he’s destroyed so much in his life, and now that he’s found her, a radiant example of something that is still good and wonderful since Snoke began his destructive reign, he cannot bring himself to eradicate her. He could tell her that she feels like pure light to him and he wants to bathe in it as long as he can.

He tells her none of that, because she doesn’t want to hear it any more than he wants to try and put it into words. 

“As I said. Rest. Take advantage of the bed while you can. I’ll not go easy on you tomorrow.”

“Go to hell,” she snarls as he closes the door behind himself, sealing her inside the room until morning.

As he returns to his own cell he thinks that’s exactly where he’s going. Hell. Now, and in death.

* * *

He doesn’t take his own advice, lying awake in his cot for long hours. The relief of removing the mask normally helps him sleep, but tonight he is aware of a new presence in the fortress. She is somewhere on the other side of the thick stone wall, muted but there, soothing and riling in equal amounts.

He gives up on his fitful rest somewhere around dawn, deciding to take advantage of the quietness of the compound before everybody else wakes.

His wound is healing well when he checks it. He takes himself to the bathhouse, banishing the servants when the tub is ready, and adding more bacta to the water before he climbs in. He doesn’t have time to soak but he is able to get clean, applying more poultice before he dresses and puts his mask back on. His thigh may be healed within a few days at this rate—though he’ll bear a silvery scar there for the rest of his life.

So be it. He’ll consider it a memorial to Trudgen.

“You—” he asks of the pallid serving girl who comes to empty the tub. Lusica, if his memory serves him well. “Were you here last night?”

She drops into a curtsy, gaze fixed on his feet. “Yes, my lord.”

“You helped bathe the girl?”

Lusica struggles to keep her face blank of emotion, panic swallowing up the momentary confusion as she nods.

“Fetch me the clothes she was wearing.”

The girl can’t move fast enough to get out of his presence and returns swiftly with a bundle of freshly-laundered rags. “Anything else, my lord?”

“Breakfast. A good one, plenty of meat. Have it delivered to my quarters along with the clothes.”

Lusica curtsies with wide eyes and he knows what’s caused the alarm—Kylo normally only takes gruel for breakfast, if that. He’s sure the whispers will be passing swiftly through the servants about what it could possibly mean.

That dealt with, Kylo heads out into the yard to see to Grimtaash. Normally he’d have checked on the horse after returning to the fortress, to ensure no injury had occurred while he was in the Silencer, but Kylo had not had the chance last night. None of the grooms have come to him with concerns, so he’s assumed everything is okay. 

The stallion is alert in his stall, snorting a greeting as Kylo approaches. He’ll need to take him for a ride later in the day, since nobody else dares ride him—he’s tossed everybody who’s tried.

To his great annoyance, Hux is also in the stables, deep in conversation with the driver of the Silencer, who has a bandage wrapped around his head.

“Ren,” he greets, attempting a smile which nonetheless comes out as a grimace. “I didn’t expect to see you awake so early.”

Kylo spots something propped against the corner of the stable and the driver catches the direction of his gaze. “I found that, my lord, when I went into the woods to get my crossbow back.”

It’s Rey’s staff. Kylo retrieves it, quickly examining the metal shaft to find where it had been welded into one piece out of three.

“And of what of the desert rat you dragged in yesterday?” There’s something behind Hux’s question, more than his usual needling. “Did you have your fun with her?”

Kylo ignores the implications in Hux’s words. Years of experience has proved that it annoys Hux more if Kylo doesn’t react to Hux’s attempts to get under his skin. Difficult as it is, it’s better to let scenarios where he’s doing great physical damage to Hux run through his mind, ignoring the man’s words in favor of picturing him being run through with Kylo’s sword over and over again.

Sometimes—and only sometimes—Kylo wishes he could tell Hux his birth name. He doesn’t find much joy in life, but he’s sure he’d relish the blood draining from Hux’s face as the obsequious bootlicker realized who he’d been taunting all these years.

No. Snapping his neck would be far more enjoyable.

“I begin training her this morning,” Kylo tells him. “I plan to teach her how to exsanguinate a man in the hopes that one day, Snoke will allow me to let her loose on you.”

Hux blanches, a true accomplishment for somebody already so pale. “The Emperor knows how valuable I am to him in ensuring the smooth running of the kingdom. Unlike some of us,  _ I _ don’t make mistakes.”

“We’ll see.”

“Oh, I’m sure we will. Meanwhile, I find myself curious about your new pet. Strong with magic, but living as a scavenger in Jakku? How unfortunate. I’m sure there’s quite the story to that, given her pretty little accent.”

Kylo’s not sure what Hux is driving at, but it must be something. He dismisses Hux’s fishing by turning his back. “I care only about her power. One day, she’ll outrank Phasma—and then where will you be?”

He walks away without looking at Hux, knowing the man will have quailed under the implications of what Kylo’s said. Hux has no power of his own—his place as Snoke’s right hand man is only secured by dint of his father being in that position before him. Before Hux committed patricide; poison, a weak and cowardly method, but the only one available to him. Hux is good at following orders and planning strategies, bound to Snoke by a shared joy in corruption and witnessing misery, but relies on the protection of Phasma to keep himself safe. 

Snoke’s court is no place to be a poor swordsman. Hux lacks the physical strength and magical prowess to keep his position secure, and if Phasma were eliminated, the many people he’d trampled under foot would target him next.

When Kylo returns to his cell, there is a cart waiting outside the door with a selection of plates on top of it—roast ham, blood sausage, eggs both scrambled and poached, fried mushrooms, kippers, half a loaf of bread’s worth of toast, jam, and his usual bowl of gruel. 

He ducks into his room to eat the gruel quickly, then finds himself sneaking some of the egg and ham too. Normally he eats one large meal in the evening, but he’d missed it the night before and given up his food on the transport for Rey to eat. Food is fuel, not something to be enjoyed, but he finds himself taking a slice of toast to spread the jam on it, sickly sweet, more flavorful than anything he’s eaten in years. He faintly wonders if Rey’s own eagerness for food has somehow made him ravenous by proxy.

He stows her old clothes and staff for later. For when she has made progress and deserves a reward.

Mask back in place, he raps on her door to give her warning, then unlocks it with a flare of his magic. 

She’s inside, curled up on the bed with her back to the wall and her knees tucked against her chest, glaring at him. The blankets are ruffled and the pillow askew, suggesting she did sleep last night, though how well is beyond his knowledge. 

“How does the door work?” she asks immediately.

“That’s for you to figure out.”

It’s simple magic, really, and this lock isn’t attuned to him yet. When she progresses he’ll have to rectify that, but until then he has no plans to teach her how to open the door. Not when that would allow her to flee the room instead of staying put, where he knows where she is. 

“Breakfast,” he tells her as he drags the cart inside, and does she catch how apologetic he sounds? “Since I forgot to arrange for a meal last night,” 

She’s rearranged her hair back into those three buns on the back of her head, and he watches them bob as she dives for the trolley, loading an empty plate with some of everything.

Rey eats with her fingers and he should find it revolting. Especially when she uses them to shovel handfuls of scrambled egg into her mouth. Particularly when the grease from the mushrooms drips down her hand. Definitely when she dips a kipper in the jam, frowning at the taste combination but swallowing anyway.

He does not find it revolting. 

Actually, he’s impressed. She manages to pack most of the food away and he has no idea where it goes—there’s nothing to her, all skin and bones—but she clears the cart of a portion meant for his appetite anyway. And he stands in the doorway silently watching her do it like he’s at the theater.

She doesn’t lick the plate clean, but he suspects she wants to. He tosses her a handkerchief to wipe her fingers clean with.

“You shouldn’t eat so much so fast,” he admonishes when he finally finds his voice. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

“I’ll be sure to aim it at you if I am.”

She’s still angry—wearing it like armor around herself. That’s a good thing. If it’s so close to the surface, it will be easier to appeal to her worst instincts, using that streak of darkness as fuel for everything she’ll need to do.

He hears muffled footsteps coming down the corridor, and turns to find another serving girl shuffling towards him, head bowed. Peera, a dark-haired waif who’s been here since she was too young to be working. She comes to a halt several feet away and waits for permission to speak.

“What?”

Peera clears her throat. “I come bearing a message.” She holds out a slip of paper in a trembling hand, and her fear stokes Kylo’s own rage. Has he ever done anything to harm any of the staff here? He’s not Hux, who’ll casually backhand any of them for daring to look at his face or not curtsying deep enough. 

He snatches the note and dismisses her with a wave, ripping the seal open as she scuttles away as fast as her slippered feet will carry her. Rey is watching with wide eyes as he scans the contents, written in Hux’s hand—elegant but imperfect penmanship, dictated by Snoke.

A cold chill climbs his spine.

_ Ren—  _

_ I have decided your apprentice’s first lessons should be guided by me. Fetch her to the training arena immediately. _

_ —Your Master _

* * *

The arena is on the other side of the throne room and is roughly half the size. Snoke rarely deigns to enter it anymore, since it’s mostly used for minor bouts between the Guard. Magic is practiced elsewhere—this room has long been dedicated to blood and violence. 

Today, Snoke waits on a gilded chair that’s been brought in especially for the occasion, his robe changed to one of black with golden stitching. A pattern winds its way around the edge of the robe, at hemline, cuffs, and collar: small, grotesque figures, the beasts from every demonic bestiary Kylo has read.

Wooden floorboards have been suspended above the normal flagstone, with enough spring in them to make movement easier on the joints and falling less likely to break bones. There are old feather mattresses propped against the walls to be used during sparring, and the equipment all the warriors use to keep themselves in condition scattered around the perimeter: ropes, weights, targets. Banners hang from the walls, each displaying Snoke’s insignia.

Rey is reluctant to enter—when is she not?—but Kylo herds her towards Snoke anyway. 

Kylo’s never had an apprentice before, but he’d already planned where he was going to start with her training. She’d learned how to summon the staff to herself, and throw off a compulsion. It’s a simple matter of expanding on those concepts, helping her understand how to manipulate the world around her. With a grounding in the basic principles of magic, everything else would make sense.

Snoke won’t take that approach. Kylo ignores the sickly churning in his belly.

“Young Rey,” he greets her, with his best impersonation of a smile. “Come closer.”

She doesn’t. Kylo releases her arm but stays close behind her, ready to grab her if she tries anything particularly stupid. Not that Snoke is at risk—Phasma waits at his side with her rifle on her hip, but despite all appearances, Snoke is deadly enough with no weapon at all. Kylo isn’t concerned about what Rey will try to do to Snoke—he’s concerned about what will happen to her if she does try.

When Rey doesn’t move, Snoke crooks a finger at her. “Closer, I said.”

Kylo feels the tension between them now. Rey’s hands are clenched into fists at her side, teeth gritted, feet planted firmly on the floor. She’s resisting Snoke’s compulsion to move and paying for it, if the beads of sweat on her face are anything to go by.

She has no idea.

Snoke’s voice drops into a rasp. “Closer.”

And she slides across the floor as he yanks her towards him, like he’s pulled her by an invisible rope. She collapses to her knees before him, but immediately tries to scramble upright and away from him. 

He flattens his hand and she sprawls against the floor, pushed down by an unseen force. She grunts, twitches, but does not get back up.

“Now,” Snoke says, “impress me. When you can stand and walk away, the lesson ends.”

The screaming starts. 

* * *

It lasts hours. All Kylo can do is watch as Rey writhes on the ground, occasionally arching up to be smashed back down. She yells and she curses, and she struggles for her breath when the pressure on her lungs grows tight.

Kylo remembers this. All of this. When he would not submit, when he thought he had a chance at fighting his way out from under Snoke’s influence. The burning in his chest as he fought to breathe, the crushing sensation like a foot on his sternum. The sensation of white-hot nails being driven through his wrists to pin him down, and razor-sharp talons ripping into his mind.

He’s not dismissed. He isn’t given any instructions, other than to watch Rey fight and struggle. It means he must stand at the back of the arena, feeling as her pain leaks out. It’s flashes of light—pinpricks of starlight against the backdrop that is Snoke’s all-consuming blackness.

_ Use your anger. Not your fear.  _

He should have told her that before they came here. Too late now.

Eventually, Snoke grows bored. “How disappointing. I expected more of you. Both of you.” He aims the last at Kylo. “Bring her back tomorrow and we’ll keep going until she manages to do something with all this potential.”

Rey lies quivering, eyes closed and breath shaky. She is unharmed, physically, but drenched in her own sweat and every last nerve feeling like it’s on fire. When Snoke sweeps out of the room, trailed by Phasma, Kylo is left to tend to her.

He crosses to crouch beside her. “Can you stand?” he asks.

She nods without opening her eyes, pushing herself to sit upright. But when she tries to go further than that, her legs collapse underneath her. Kylo is there before she hits the floor again, an arm around her waist to keep her upright.

He hears her throat clear, and that makes her wince—she’s been screaming for hours, her voice must be shredded.

“I didn’t throw up,” she whispers.

“What?”

“My breakfast. I didn’t throw it up,” she tells him, defiantly.

He’s more proud of her than he can put into words. 

“A hot bath will help. Can you make it there?”

Her eyes flutter and she gives the slightest shake of her head. 

“I can carry you,” he offers. 

That steels her resolve. Like he knew it would, even though he actually wanted the opportunity to carry her; not like last night, but cradled against his chest like he’d carried her through Jakku. That wouldn’t be good, not with the eyes watching them throughout the fortress. That sign of weakness would sign her death warrant. Luckily for Rey, she’s stubborn enough not to want his touch, stumbling away from him.

“Come on,” she rasps. “We haven’t got all day.”

She makes it to the bathhouse. Barely. Kylo instructs Peera to bring Rey more clean clothes and let her soak as long as she needs, adding a splash of his bacta mixture to the water and stirring it into a hot tea for her to drink. Disgusting, but he’s not convinced she tastes things like an ordinary person anyway. Then he orders plenty of hot food for her and stands guard outside.

He wishes he could let her rest, but she only faces more of the same tomorrow. He must show her how to arm herself tonight if she has any chance of defending herself against Snoke.

When Rey emerges, she is still drained, but there is more color in her cheeks, and that stunning defiance has only grown stronger.

“Did you eat?” he asks her.

He doesn’t know why he’s even bothering to enquire—he can see the outline of where she’s stashed food in her pockets again.

“Of course.” Her voice sounds better too. She turns to head back down the corridor towards their rooms without being prompted, and when she moves, she’s not limping anymore, even if she does hold herself a little too stiffly. 

“Would you be more comfortable in your own room, or in mine?” he asks her.

“What?” she asks sharply, coming to a halt.

“We have more to do.”

“No. I won’t—I’m not.” Her hands find her hips. “You accused me of that yesterday when you said that thing about me working in a call-house. Well, I don’t do that and I don’t care what you do, I’m not going to be somebody’s bed-warmer or—or consort, or whatever it is you have in mind…”

He almost laughs. He might have, for the first time in years, if the mask even made such a thing possible. He wants to laugh that she thinks that’s where his interest in her lies, and he wants to laugh because her contempt for him has bubbled to the surface again and made how objectionable she finds him very, very clear. Laughter is better than the ugly twisting in his chest at the latter.

“You misunderstand me,” he replies. “This is part of your training. It’ll help you tomorrow.”

Her cheeks are aflame, her gaze anywhere but the mask. She doesn’t trust his intentions. Kylo ought to make it clear he has no interest in her at all in that way—that their relationship as master and apprentice won’t even stray into the territory of friendship—but his tongue refuses to say the words.

“My room,” she answers.

Inside, she slumps into the chair while he gets the fire burning, and he can hear her fidgeting while she waits. 

“Do you know why you were unable to fight Snoke off today?” he asks her.

She lets out a slow sigh, which seems to be as much answer as he’s going to get.

“You were concentrating on the pain. You were trying to push him away using everything except the one thing that will make you strong—your anger.”

When he turns around she is sitting cross-legged in the chair with a deep frown etched into her face.

“I wasn’t exactly thinking,” she says. “I was just—fighting. Trying to keep him out of my head.”

“I know. Tomorrow, you need to get angry.”

She shivers. “You make it sound easy.”

“It can be.” He approaches her. “I’m going to show you how it feels to use your anger as a shield, but it means I’ll need to try to get into your head.”

“No. Kriff no.”

“Fine. I can spend tomorrow watching you lose against Snoke again.” He pivots towards the door. “He won’t relent.”

_ “—Fine.” _

When Kylo turns back, Rey is biting her lower lip and has folded her arms across her chest. 

He holds out his hand towards her. Gloved. He lets it rest, not quite touching, but hovering close to her face, then closes his eyes, concentrating on her presence.

She’s there, a warm glow that extends far beyond her physical body. Maybe that’s the problem. There’s so much for Snoke to feast on—her light is potential and life, things Snoke wants and can never stop devouring. 

All of them here are creatures of darkness. Whatever light once existed within Kylo was extinguished when he fell under Snoke’s control. Only that utter emptiness is enough to keep Snoke at bay. 

Kylo reaches into her light, like warming his hands over a fire. He hadn’t even realized how cold he was until she starts to thaw him, and he throws up his shields: shadows to consume all that light.

“When you feel me in your mind, push back,” he instructs.

He treads lightly, swimming into her brightness slowly. She gasps, and he opens his eyes; hers are closed and she’s deep in concentration. She’s pushing back against him, but softly, like she’s afraid to hurt him. He weighs on her heavier, trying to force her to push harder, but instead she shifts, away from his invasion.

Enveloping him instead.

This is no good. No wonder she couldn’t defeat Snoke. Underneath everything, her instincts aren’t to tear and slash like they ought to be.

He needs her fury.

“Stars, you’re weak,” he chides. “Perhaps I misjudged you. Perhaps I should take you back to Jakku and let the vultures finish you off.”

There’s a flicker of derision within her. Something that says  _ I know what you’re trying to do and it won’t work. _

“What could a filthy scavenger offer to this court? Maybe I should turn you over to Hux for his entertainment, since he seemed so intrigued. Maybe that’s where your talents will lie.”

_ Pathetic. _

“Now I understand why your parents abandoned you like they did—”

She explodes, flames licking at his shields. “Get out of my head!” she snarls, shoving him with all her might. He retreats, pleased—

Until she follows him. 

Burning through his shields into his mind instead, and he’s so alarmed he has to scramble to throw new shields up, better ones, stronger ones, to push her away, to break the connection…

He’s brought to his knees before her, panting and wondering what just happened. Her anger is a vibrant thing, almost visible to the naked eye, and beneath it he can see something within her light. Something that wasn’t there before. The tiniest sliver of darkness.

His darkness.

Worse, he can feel that she’s left something inside him. At his core, the light that got extinguished so many years ago has been rekindled, sparked in her presence. 

No. It’s not supposed to work like this.

He staggers to his feet, shoving away from her while he tries to regain his cool. 

“That worked,” she says triumphantly. “I pushed you out.”

“You did,” he admits. “Hold onto that for tomorrow.”

He doesn’t run from her, but retreats faster than is dignified. She watches him with shrewd eyes when he opens the door to leave, and seals it behind him.

Whatever just happened, he has a sinking feeling it is going to cause Snoke to lash out. He’ll be determined to quash the light in Kylo once again, and he’ll be furious with whoever is responsible. 

Rey will be the one in the firing line.

* * *

Kylo follows the same routine in the morning. He’s spent the night trying to smother the new core of light within him and failing. His only grim triumph is he’s left a seed of his own black shadows planted in Rey, and with time that should be enough to protect her.

She eats breakfast with as much gusto as the day before and strides ahead of him on the way to the throne room, shoulders back and head held high. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she’s looking forward to Snoke’s attacks on her—but no, she’s just  _ that _ stubborn. He ought to be impressed.

Snoke awaits them again, this time draped in garish red. It makes him look sickly and sallow. 

Rey strides across the room to plant herself firmly in front of Snoke, and he chuckles at her bravery.

“Are you so eager to delve into that pain once more, my dear girl?” He lounges back in the throne and sneers at her. “Perhaps there’s a part of you that enjoys it, hmm?”

“No,” Rey tells him firmly. “I’m just not going to let you win.”

“Very brave. Of course, it’s not me you have to defeat. You see, I’ve had a chance to ponder my tactics overnight, and I’ve come to realize that I really shouldn’t undermine Ren as your master.”

The blood begins to pound in Kylo’s ears. He does not like where this is going.

“No, if anybody ought to test your skills, it should be him. Isn’t that right?” Snoke grins at Kylo. “Come, Ren. It’s your turn to test the girl.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on [Tumblr](https://cellar-darlings.tumblr.com/) for a teaser for chapter five on June 7th.


	6. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey is one raw nerve ending. There’s a high-pitched ringing in her ears which she thinks may be her own screaming. 
> 
> That’s about all she’s aware of.
> 
> Today’s training is worse than yesterday’s. She’s sure of it. But she’s also sure she’s been burning for a hundred years and petty things like days no longer count.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everybody! Hope you're all staying safe and healthy given that the world continues to be *gestures vaguely*.
> 
> The only warning on this chapter is a continuation of Rey's "training" from last chapter.

Rey is one raw nerve ending. There’s a high-pitched ringing in her ears which she thinks may be her own screaming. 

That’s about all she’s aware of.

Today’s training is worse than yesterday’s. She’s sure of it. But she’s also sure she’s been burning for a hundred years and petty things like days no longer count.

_ Come on. Use your anger. Find that darkness and fight back. _

The voice is quiet, below the ringing and the pain. It’s soft and familiar, even though she’s also sure she’s never heard it before. 

_ I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. _

_ You can _ , the voice insists.  _ You must. _

It’s insistent, refusing to keep quiet, and that in itself is enough to make her temper flare.

_ Leave me alone! _

The pain recedes. Only for a second, but it does.

_ See? _ It crows, even as the burning comes flooding back in.  _ Do it again. _

_ Kriff off _ ! she throws at it with as much ire as she can, digging her heels in to push the voice away. She shoves so hard that she suddenly finds herself lying on the floor of the training room, blinking up at the ceiling high above. Her ears still ring but her voice is silent, and she is aware of Kylo stood a few feet away. His energy is even more unstable than usual, red-hot and thorny. He’s upright but there’s a moment of surprise in him. Surprise and, she thinks…pride?

Then there’s Snoke. He’s here too. She can feel him, that awful, ravenous presence, dry and dusty. He’s enjoying himself even more than he did yesterday. Whenever she’s had a chance to look at his face he’s worn the sliest of smiles, a smugness she would do anything to wipe from his jaw with the hilt of her staff.

She clings to that feeling—the urge to take her pain and fling it outwards—when Kylo claws his way back in, already recovered from being flung out of her head.

She’s still not ready this time. But she’s able to push him out all the same with minimal screaming, and when he comes once more, she shoves him out completely, watching him stagger as she throws her full might in his direction. Maybe stagger is too strong a description—he takes a step, as if adjusting his weight on his feet. She’ll take it.

“Oh!” Snoke says with gleeful contempt. “Is she making progress, Ren?”

“Some.”

“Hmm. Do you think she’ll make it to the door today?”

Rey growls as she lies there, panting and listening to them speak. A brief respite that allows her to gather her anger around her like a cloak.

“My lord, I don’t see how this helps—” Kylo says.

Inside, the voice says to Rey,  _ Good. Keep your anger there. Harden it.  _

“—There are other ways of teaching her to shield.”

“Maybe,” Snoke replies. “But we’re using this one. Continue.”

She’s ready, this time, when the claws come ripping back into her. Snarling and fierce, and she can practically feel Kylo’s magic reverberate away from her shields. Triumphant, she rolls and shoves herself to her feet, already level with Snoke on his throne before Phasma can react.

Rey’s shoved down. Physically this time, as Snoke’s eyes widen then narrow at her thwarted attack.

“Oh, I see how it is. Far from broken. Yet to learn her place in the hierarchy.” He waves a hand. “But progressing.” He sounds disappointed at the prospect. “Very well. We’ll continue again tomorrow.”

He rises, striding out of the room with Phasma at his heels, leaving Rey alone with Kylo.

“You did well,” Kylo says, and she swears he  _ does _ sound proud. Somehow, she’s learning to discern tone in the monotone inflections the mask imposes on his speech. He doesn’t help Rey to her feet but she pushes herself up anyway, no matter how much she actually wants to stay splayed out on the floor and never move again.

“Do I get to have a bath now?” she asks.

“Why? It’s not even noon.”

“What?” There are no windows in the training room but surely most of the day passed with her being torn into like that?

“You progressed much faster today.”

It didn’t feel like it. Especially not with how sore she feels, prickly anger thrumming under her skin. She wants to pace, to fight. And he knows it. “And I’m sure there’s more where that’s coming from.”

He doesn’t deny it. “Would you like to spar?”

She considers it, rolling her shoulders. “I don’t have a weapon.” That’s one thing the training room lacks—she presumes because they all carry their own preferred weapon. Even now, Kylo’s red sword hangs in a scabbard from his belt.

“Don’t you?” he asks.

If it weren’t for the mask, she’d assume he was smiling. What kind of smile is beyond her: cunning, a smirk like Snoke’s, or one of genuine delight? Not for the first time she wonders what he looks like under the mask and armor: with the cape on she’s reminded of an enormous bat. Maybe that’s it. Maybe if he removes the helmet he’ll have a rodent’s face, and claws under the gloves, and fur all over his body. 

Though more and more, Rey is beginning to suspect he’s not really a demon. A monster, yes, but the human kind. He’s probably twenty, even thirty years older than her. Ugly and scarred, his twisted soul reflected in his features. Not as ugly as Snoke—but even Unkar Plutt hadn’t been as ugly as Snoke, and that’s saying something.

“Obviously not.” She shakes her empty hands to emphasize the point.

“Over there.” He points to a chest at the back of the room, and the lid creeks open with a twist of his fingers. 

She sighs, turning to head over to the chest when he tuts at her. 

“What?”

“Call it to you. You already did it in the carriage—do it again.”

“I can’t even see what it’s in there!”

“You don’t need to.”

She grumbles under her breath that actually she does, because how can she pull something towards her if she doesn’t even know what it is, but she reaches out with her magic in the direction of the chest anyway. It feels largely empty, but there are—there are long things inside. Sticks.

Staffs. Oh.

Rey curls a strand of magic around one of them, lifting it upwards, and then yanking it across the room towards her. It sails into her waiting hand, lighter than her own weapon because it’s made of wood.

“I’d rather have my own staff,” she tells him. “When I escape, I’ll find it in the woods—”

“It isn’t in the woods. It’s in my room.”

“Then why can’t I have it?”

“You can, when you’ve been properly trained on how to wield it.”

“I  _ know _ how to fight with it.”

“You can protect yourself in a brawl in Jakku. Not against a trained fighter. I can teach you—if nothing else, if you are persistent about escaping, it’ll help you stand up against any of Snoke’s warriors.”

“I know exactly why you want me to be able to hold my own against Snoke’s warriors.”

“You do?” He pauses, cocking his head, and his next words are softer. Almost intimate. “Ah. You do.”

Rey resists the urge to squirm under his scrutiny. Something about the delivery of his words coils up inside her and she glances away, clenching her fist around the unfamiliar staff.

When she looks back, he is still watching her intently.

“Do you ever take that thing off?” she demands, pointing at the mask.

“Not around people.”

“You should. It’s annoying.”

He shrugs, and somehow makes the movement look elegant. Which shouldn’t be possible for somebody so big. “It is an honor the Emperor has bestowed upon me.” The words are stiff, like he’s repeating them from rote.

“An honor. Right.” She rolls her eyes. “Though it makes sense—everybody wears them. Except that ginger fellow. The one with the weasel face.”

Another ripple of almost-amusement. “Hux. He is not a warrior.”

“You want me to earn a mask. That’s what you said when you brought me here. You want me behind a mask, fighting to the death like an animal.”

“No.”

“Yes. Fighting for his entertainment.”

Kylo grunts. “The court is cruel, that is true. But much in life is. You know that as well as any of us. Now. Show me what you can do with this.”

“What?”

“Attack me.”

She eyes the sword holstered at his hip dubiously. “I don’t think so.”

He follows her gaze, then unclips his belt, striding across the room to deposit his sword and scabbard on the chair Snoke vacated. Then he drapes his cape over it. He steps back towards her with his hands conspicuously empty.

“There. That seems like an even balance, doesn’t it?” She hates how he doesn’t even sound smug when he says it. “Come on. Try and kill me.”

So she does.

The staff isn’t designed to kill anybody. It allows Rey to fight against much bigger opponents without getting too close—a must in Jakku—and to cause a decent amount of damage, but she’s never actually tried to inflict a mortal wound with one before. The only way to do that would be to swing for his head, and she’s sure his helmet will provide protection against that. Not that he intends to let her get that close. He clearly doesn’t expect her to succeed.

She’ll show him. She’s seen him fight, more than he’s had a chance to observe her. He’ll try to grab the staff away from her, but he’s prone to believing feints. She keeps the staff low, getting in closer than she’d normally like, aiming at his legs so it’s harder for him to get a grip on the other ends. 

He blocks—of course he blocks, batting away her heavy blows like they’re nothing, using only his massive hands to protect himself. 

She deliberately telegraphs that she’s going to move right. A subtle glance in that direction while she aims her body in the opposite, and he’s there meeting her forward leap when she does go right, giving her a split-second to pivot away rather than collide with him. She darts backwards, sending another clumsy swing at his legs. He leaps over them, somehow graceful, and they circle each other until Rey makes another feint to the right.

_ See? I’m terrible at feinting. And I always favor my right. _

She can’t beat him in brute strength, but that doesn’t matter. Rey’s been fighting bigger and uglier opponents since she was much, much smaller. She’ll rely on her wits instead, setting out a trap for him to stumble into like the big, lumbering beast that he is.

Rey focuses on his torso now, still careful not to let him grab the staff, grunting with her frustrated, frantic strokes before aiming low again. The third time’s the charm. This time, he’s grown lazy, anticipating that she will move right when she looks that way.

She goes left. Driving the end of the staff into his leg, and then flipping the other end forward into his chest. He doesn’t go down, but he does stagger, and Rey dances back out of range. She plants the staff and uses her momentum to lift herself up, flying feet first into his torso.

_ Now _ he goes down, thudding to the ground on his back with a loud grunt. She drops into a roll on the other side of him, scrambling back to her feet and summoning the staff back to her hand, slamming it down towards his head.

It freezes, jarring up through her teeth, an inch from the helmet.

“I should have made it clear,” he tells her, and she can’t even tell if he sounds winded. “No magic.”

“I’m not using any!”

“You are. You don’t realize it, but you are. For balance, mostly. When you made that leap—”

And suddenly Rey understands. 

All her life, her instincts have been there to protect her from bad falls. When she’s lost her grip inside the belly of a war engine and should have fallen to her death, or broken the kinds of bones that would have been a death sentence anyway, she’s always had luck on her side. But it wasn’t luck. It was magic, doing just enough to keep her alive without her realizing it.

“Try again,” Kylo commands, already back on his feet.

She leaps at him with a roar.

* * *

The next day is worse. When she arrives at the training room, limbs already heavy with the knowledge of what’s to come, Snoke twists the knife once more. Now he and Kylo will both attempt to breach her defenses. Kylo protests, but he does as he’s told.

She only has so much anger inside her to fend them off.

There’s no sparring that afternoon.

Instead, when she limps back to her room, even her appetite deserting her, her resolve to escape returns. 

She’ll not survive here. She’s not even sure Snoke intends for her to do so—the daily sessions in the training room don’t feel like she’s progressing towards anything. She’d assumed that learning magic would involve discovering how to float things, how to heat things up, how to do the extraordinary things she’d read about in stories. This—this isn’t it. 

So Rey observes. Every time Kylo uses a piece of his own magic, she watches. Not only with her eyes but with that weird sense that awakened the day he found her, the one that can feel when he uses his power to do uncanny things. She can extend a thread of herself out towards him, winding it around his magic to experience what he’s doing. Sometimes it’s like trying to read a book with her eyes closed. But sometimes it’s as simple as opening her eyes.

She’s not even sure if he can feel her doing it. Maybe he does, and this is a concession to helping her learn in a way Snoke won’t approve of. He’d tried, that first night after Snoke, to show her how to fight back. It hadn’t been as effective as he’d obviously hoped but it had helped. Yet it had also given Rey a little insight into him.

Because she sees him more clearly now. Yes, he’s full of terrible fire, a temper that if unleashed will burn everything in his path. But the fuel for that fire is the spark of pain underneath it. Rey doesn’t know why, but Kylo is a dog kicked too many times, like the mangy thing Plutt had kept to guard his workshop. Plutt had been the source of the dog’s pain, but the idiot creature had remained loyal to its master anyway, turning that pain outward onto anyone who dared trespass against Plutt. That’s Kylo. He follows Snoke’s orders blindly, even when he doubts them, even when it only hurts him more.

Rey would feel sympathy for him if she had the energy. She might even entertain the idea of offering to help him—of telling him that if they ran away from here together, his life would only improve. But she’s not an idiot. She’d only barely escaped from Plutt’s own mongrel when she’d tried showing it some kindness one day and scratching its head. She’s not repeating that mistake. 

On the third day of Snoke and Kylo combining their powers to make her life hell, she’s resolute. She’s getting out of here, or she’s going to die in the attempt.

It’s another day where Rey has made incremental progress and been rewarded with the opportunity to fight Kylo in the afternoon. She doesn’t see it as an opportunity—not until he offers to take her outside.

She hasn’t seen the sunlight in days.

Her cell and the hallways of the fortress lack any windows. For defensive purposes, probably, but it makes the whole place dark and endlessly awful. She’s fed up of torchlight and eagerly follows Kylo out into the yard with the practice staff.

There is no sun. Wherever it is, it’s hiding behind the dense canopy of clouds overhead. There is no warmth either—the air damp and chilly with the threat of rain. But even that excites her, since rain was such a precious commodity in Jakku. The air here is fresh and she takes eager, gulping breaths of it, reminding herself that Snoke can’t take this away from her. 

The fortress sits near the base of a hill, and Rey struggles to see outside the high walls which ring it. But above them looms the old castle, the one she’d seen the night she arrived when she tried to escape, the stone keep towering over everything.

She wonders why Snoke didn’t take control of the castle when he took the throne. The higher ground makes more sense—it’s easier to defend, especially with the way the forest provides cover for anybody approaching the fortress to attack it.

Maybe he’s just  _ that _ confident that his magic will protect him from anything. That, and the brutes he has guarding him.

Now that Kylo has learned she knows his weaknesses, it’s impossible to beat him. Sparring is just another way for him to grind her down, like he does in the training room. But it lets her vent her anger, so she does it. It helps her collapse into dreamless sleep later on when she reaches her cot.

Not tonight, though. Tonight, she leans against the wall, pretending to sway with exhaustion as Kylo unlocks the door. She lets a thread of herself wind around him while he does it, and she feels the precise way he does it: reaching into the entire locking mechanism to slide the barrels open. Just like a key, but one that’s in his head and cannot be copied, a lock that cannot be picked with mechanical means.

So be it.

She does not climb into her bed. Instead, she gathers the food she has secreted away over the days she’s been here, putting it all into the pockets of the cape Kylo gifted her. 

Then she sits in front of the fireplace and waits. Watches the embers burn down, guttering in the perpetual draft of this infernal place. On the other side of the wall, Kylo’s presence is quiet. The walls are thick enough that when he disappears into his own cell she can’t feel him, and for that she’s thankful, or she’d never sleep. But at least his uncomfortable energy would keep her tense and ready right now.

She wishes she knew the routines of the fortress better. All she knows is that they don’t keep guards on the door, only on the gates. Nobody seems to patrol, and she suspects the guards are concentrated around Snoke himself, who she has no intention of going near. Her route is clear—down the corridor towards the kitchens, then sneak out of the side entrance to the stables. She won’t steal a horse—because she has no idea how to ride a horse—but she can climb the walls behind there, where it’s sheltered and hidden from view. They’re trying to keep people out, not stop them from escaping, not if they trust that Kylo’s magic door lock will keep her secured.

She waits until she can hear the first faint cry of a rooster. Dim and distant, but summoning dawn all the same. Now is her time, when all are deep asleep and she has the last vestiges of night to shield her.

The door is trickier than expected. Sweat is beading on her brow before she feels it click, releasing and sliding open. She stifles her gasp and her joy, peering out into the corridor. 

Empty. Dark, all the torches burned out overnight.

Perfect. Rey might not be used to sneaking around in the dark, but she’s navigated the insides of plenty of wrecks in low visibility.

Another example of her instinctual use of magic, she supposes. Now it feels like an extension of herself, as easily used as moving her arm—the distant whispers that are the slumbering forms of the fortress’s inhabitants brushing at the edge of her existence. But given so many people here are magic users, it’s not something she wants to be using—instead she tries to pull her powers back in, contracting around herself so her own presence won’t disturb anybody’s sleep and rouse them. 

It’s like navigating with one eye closed, her depth perception not what it should be, but the bare stone construction means sound echoes louder than it should anyway. Somewhere she can hear water dripping—slowly, every second or so, but though it’s distant, it’s also unmuffled, amplified off the bare walls and floor.

She creeps, the soft soles of her boots making no sound even to her own ears. She’s halfway down to the corridor towards the bathhouse and has to turn a corner, pausing to peer around it when she hears—something.

The grind of steel? The softest brush of cloth? Behind her.

She freezes, holding herself still and hardly daring to breath. If she’s woken Kylo—

If Kylo was awake and close by, she’d feel him. There’s no mistaking his biting, prickly heat.

But whatever it was, it silences again, the slow drumbeat of the water dripping like a metronome in the silence, counting down the seconds. A minute passes by that count, and then she sets off again, shuffling along slowly.

The door to the main kitchen is open, wide enough for her to slip through without having to trouble the hinges. Inside is warmer, the last embers of that fireplace still glowing gently in the grate. She pads across the room, careful, unsure of where the servants actually sleep. They must have their own quarters, but she doesn’t know if they’re close to the kitchens or not.

The handle to the outside door squeaks as she tries it, and she pauses once again, heartbeat thumping in her ears. Waiting. 

Then she decides there’s no point. She fumbles, but gets the door open, letting the frigid night air in. Thanking every star in the sky that it wasn’t locked. From here it’s a simple dash behind the stables and she’s at the base of the wall, cloaked in shadows with only a sliver of moon to guide her.

She lets out a breath, turning to stare up at the wall. She can do this—she’s climbed much bigger surfaces before, and she might not have her grappling equipment here, but this isn’t smooth, it’s built from chunky blocks of stone, practically designed for climbing up with all the foot- and hand-holds the gaps provide.

Something clamps around her upper arm. And then over her mouth.

Rey tries to turn but the something is a hand—a big, unyielding hand, and when she glances down she sees it’s pale as the moon itself, thick fingers wound around her skin from elbow to shoulder. She follows the path of the arm—white skin, dotted with dark spots, muscles taut and toned—to broad shoulders and a torso that can only possibly look that big because she’s so close to it. So much skin that looks bleached like bone but patterned with those pinprick marks, and silvery scars that shine like the moon—all vaguely hidden under a black cowl, which only manages to hide some musculature and none of the strength.

Only when she manages to take a step back can she see who has her in his grip, tipping her head up to see the face of her captor towering above her.

A pale forehead and dark eyes under a crown of dark hair, thick and curly and ink-black, hanging below his chin. But that’s all she can see—below his eyes, a knitted kerchief covers most of his face. His dark eyebrows crease together in a frown.

He doesn’t say a word.

She thinks she knows—it doesn’t make sense because she can’t feel it—and yet—can it be—?

She reaches for the kerchief with her free hand and finds herself dragged backwards into that chest, hard as marble against her back, her arms pinned at her sides beneath one of those massive limbs.

One word, rasped in her ear, deep and scratchy with sleep.  _ “No.” _

“Kylo?” she asks, the word muffled against his hand. His fingers twitch against her face and then still.

He doesn’t reply, and it’s all the confirmation she needs. Her face burns with the realization that her captor—her master—isn’t the wraith she always imagined him to be. Under the armor, under the mask, he’s just a man. A ridiculously large one, with the body of a warrior which should come as no surprise to her given she’s seen him fight. But it’s one thing to assume and another to be pressed against him with only the cowl even attempting to cover his skin, his bare hand still covering her mouth—and jaw, and chin, really—heat leaching from him into her, and the scent of soap tickling her nose.

_ “Get off me.” _

He doesn’t release her; doesn’t even relax his hold.

_ “Won’t scream.” _

His hand peels away enough for her to talk.

“I don’t have a weapon and you’ve obviously caught me, so let go and I’ll walk back to my room with my dignity intact, yeah?”

She hears a huff underneath the kerchief but a moment later he releases her, slowly, angling her so she cannot dive for the wall. What does he think she’ll do, try leaping up it while he grabs for her legs?

Well. Maybe.

He steers her back through the side door, closing it firmly shut behind them and blocking out the last of the moonlight. Then he marches her down the corridor towards their rooms. They don’t see another soul, and move so quietly that Rey glances down, astonished to find that even Kylo’s feet are bare.

He dressed in a hurry to come stop her. That’s why no mask, why there’s only those loose breeches on his hips, why he doesn’t even have his sword at his side. Instead there’s only a dagger in a thigh sheath and she finds herself wondering if he actually sleeps in the kriffing thing.

He doesn’t say a word as he shoves her back inside her room, depositing her on the cot so roughly she bounces despite the fact the mattress might as well be made of dust instead of straw. 

A firm hand presses her down onto the mattress and for the first time tonight she squeals, suddenly wondering if his promises that his interest in her is entirely chaste have been undone by her escape attempt. He looms over her, an enormous shadow against the rest of the shadows, one ankle firmly gripped and pinned down. She wriggles, trying to get her foot loose, trying to get her knees between his so she can kick him, can get him right between the legs where she knows it hurts for a man, hands grappling at his thighs.

But he’s already moving away from her, and when she tries to kick at him something bites into her ankle, metal clinking against metal.

He’s shackled her to the bedframe. 

Without another word he departs, shutting the door behind her with an ominous clink.

_ “Kriff, _ ” Rey yells into the quiet of the room.

Thwarted. She’s pretty sure she’s not going to get an opportunity like that again, not in the dead of night. Not unless she wants to end up chained to  _ his _ bedframe instead.

Still. At least she has his dagger now, swiped from the thigh sheath.

* * *

She lies there seething until he comes back to her with breakfast. The dagger she stashes under the mattress, and then she lies staring at the ceiling, coming up with a new plan.

Why hadn’t she felt him creep up on her? Can he suppress his presence? Probably—why hadn’t she thought of that? It’s not the first time he’s crept up on her. He doesn’t normally bother concealing himself, relying on strength and skill alone. 

She needs to learn how to do that. Not that she expects anyone here to teach her. Kylo and Snoke will want to know where she is at all times, and letting her mask her presence would make it too easy for her to sneak away. When she escapes—and she  _ will _ escape—it makes it that much harder for them to hunt her down.

She finds her plans—constructed loosely around the holes in her knowledge of the fortress, conjured up and then discarded quickly when she’s able to pull a thread to unravel them with little trying—keep being interrupted by her thoughts that want to circle in other directions. She’s fidgety, though part of that is because it’s difficult to get comfortable when she’s shackled like this.

The rest of it ebbing adrenaline. A tightness in her skin, an uncomfortable edge that she normally only feels when he’s nearby, all tall and menacing. Only now it’s between her shoulder blades, where all his heat had been pressed when he grabbed her. It makes her squirm and frown up at the ceiling.

He’s just a man. Rey isn’t sure if she’s more or less comforted by that thought than when she’d believed he was a demon. It’s not like him being a demon made him safer than a man, but nor did she think that him being a man made him safer than a demon. The fact that he is capable of what she’s seen him do, and if even half the stories she’s heard about him are true… Well, his body might be human, but she’s not sure about his soul.

So why can’t she stop thinking about the breadth of his shoulders, or the sheen of his hair?

He’s strong. Muscled. This shouldn’t be surprising. Then again, she’s never seen an adult man in so little clothing. She’s definitely never been this close to one. Maybe they all look like that under their tunics, and maybe that’s why old Marnie in Niima had always chuckled at Rey’s disinterest whenever the subject of men came up.

Or not. Something tells her Hux doesn’t look anything like that under his sleek uniform. Nor Snoke—and that thought almost has the last of the evening’s dinner chased out of her stomach. But the other Guard? Probably.

She expects to be punished when Kylo arrives. Less food—only gruel—or no food at all? But he brings the usual range of foods on the little cart, and says nothing while she works her way through it all. He’s back in the infernal mask, and she squelches down the twinge of disappointment she feels, even if her breath hitches as he unshackles her.

Only when she’s finished eating does he speak.

“You did well last night.”

She stops in the middle of licking her fingers clean to gape at him in amazement. “What?”

“To unlock the door and get so far. If I wasn’t especially attuned to your movements, you might have made it over the wall.”

“I—thank-you?”

She’s flustered. She’s thought she’d felt pride from him a few times, but to hear it from him—even in that horrible, mechanical voice filtered through the mask—it’s still more than she’s ever had in her life.

She waits, still expecting a punishment of a different kind. But maybe training is the biggest punishment of all.

“Don’t do it again.”

This stuns her into laughter. “Like that? No.”

“You won’t succeed.”

“I only have to be lucky once.” She stands up, shaking her clothes loose of crumbs and heading out ahead of him, ready for another day of Snoke’s brand of training. “And I will be.”

The dagger is tucked inside her breast-band at her back. She doesn’t know when she’ll use it. She only knows that she will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on [Tumblr](https://cellar-darlings.tumblr.com/) for a teaser for chapter six on June 21st. Or ask me things! Talk to me! Whatever :)


	7. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey looks at him differently in the days following her escape attempt.
> 
> Kylo isn’t sure how to classify the exact way she’s looking at him. Sometimes her emotions are still inscrutable to him: anger is clear, as is pain, and the savage little moments of triumph she carves out of her training sessions. But those she wears openly and brightly, her entire face transformed by them. Others are muted: a soft crease in her forehead, lips pressed together, or long stares like she’s trying to burn a hole in his mask with her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! There is another scene of violence in this chapter, though less graphic than in chapter three and much shorter. It starts with the words "Kylo obeys without waiting for Snoke to voice it as a true order" and ends at the next horizontal line.

Rey looks at him differently in the days following her escape attempt.

Kylo isn’t sure how to classify the exact way she’s looking at him. Sometimes her emotions are still inscrutable to him: anger is clear, as is pain, and the savage little moments of triumph she carves out of her training sessions. But those she wears openly and brightly, her entire face transformed by them. Others are muted: a soft crease in her forehead, lips pressed together, or long stares like she’s trying to burn a hole in his mask with her eyes.

She’d almost made it out of the fortress, and he should have punished her for it. There are drills he does with the Guard—push-ups in full armor, laps of the courtyard that way too. He could have made her do that kind of thing. Or made her eat nothing but gruel for a couple of weeks. He persuades himself that she’d suffer the latter with no complaint, even if he made a point of emptying out the secret hiding places she has for food, but then she’d have less energy for the training sessions with Snoke.

The sessions. He hates them. Possibly more than she does.

Snoke had blindsided him with the order to torment Rey—and it had been an order, turned to one when Kylo hesitated to immediately begin tearing into her with magic.

_ “Do it, Ren. Now.” _

He’d resisted until the pain welled up inside him, like lightning burning through his every nerve. Then he’d had to obey, turning his agony outward and unleashing it on Rey instead.

But she’d fought back. Quickly, to Kylo’s satisfaction and Snoke’s annoyance, and though the victory had been short lived he’d seen it as more proof that Rey would be better than any of the Guard. 

Her escape attempt was only more of the same. He hadn’t shown her how to unlock the door but she’d figured it out anyway—if he had to guess, by observing him, but she’d spent years dealing with broken machinery. She was bound to figure it out eventually, as he’d believed she would. However she managed it, his first emotion when he’d woken up to the realization she’d gotten out wasn’t panic, but pride.

Though panic had followed very swiftly.

He’d ensured there was a spell on the lock that alerted him when somebody opened it who wasn’t him. That’s how he’d found himself bolting awake in the dead of the night like somebody had doused him with cold water. It had taken him precious moments to come around, heart racing, realizing he was actually bone dry and remembering the purpose to the spell.

He was up and out of the bed an instant later, crossing to open his own door, before he was forced to his knees by the familiar pain, like somebody had taken a hot poker and shoved it inside his skull.

That had confused him even more—he blinked up through black spots swimming in his vision, half expecting Snoke to be looming over him causing the pain. But the door remained closed, and Kylo remained alone.

Alone and maskless. 

He made a second attempt to leave before giving up, resigned to being trapped in his room if he didn’t cover his face. Snoke’s edict, all those years ago:  _ You must never show your face to a living soul.  _

Kylo was in his sleep wear, a loose pair of breeches and nothing else, his face as bare as his chest. If he left the room unmasked he would inevitably see somebody else—most probably Rey herself—and somehow the magic knew that, preventing him from even taking that risk.

He wasted precious seconds debating how to proceed. The night is his only time without the helmet and he hates every second he spends underneath it, but if he had to follow Rey, he needed to cover his face.

His hand hovered over the mask, discarded on top of his trunk, before he yanked open a drawer and pulled out a kerchief to tie around his face. A loophole, he hoped. Then for good measure he grabbed his discarded cowl and threw that over his torso, approaching the door like it would burn him.

It opened and he was able to pass without another wave of pain.

A successful loophole.

Rey wasn’t in the corridor by the time he emerged, and he double checked her room to be sure she’d gone. The door was open, her bed empty, and her stash of food gone too. Then he peeled off down the main hallway as quietly as he could—she couldn’t have had much of a headstart on him, but she was nowhere to be found by the time he’d reached the main doors.

It would be ironic if she’d managed to escape because of Snoke’s order to Kylo. An irony that Kylo decided he rather enjoyed.

He had to find her anyway.

Not just because he would be punished if she escaped. Not because she would be captured once more and it would lead to her own punishment—or death. But because he couldn’t bear the idea of the fortress without her. She’s the only thing that makes it bearable.

Outside, the courtyard was empty. He should have raised the alarm—with all the Guard hunting her, she wouldn’t get far. Instead he headed for the gates, wondering if she’d tried to slip through them, or climb them.

Then he heard it. The creak of hinges and the soft pad of footfalls over by the stables. He peered in that direction, and noticed the side door that led out of the training arena had been left ajar. She was behind the stable block, so he looped around the back of them from the opposite direction.

And there she was. Draped in an old cloak of his, sizing up the height of the wall and—she was going to climb it, the idiot girl. She thought she could make it over without being shredded by Snoke’s defensive spells.

Did she even know about those? Was she planning on scaling the wall without sensing it for magic?

Of course not. There’s so much he hadn’t taught her yet. 

She didn’t sense him, not until he’d got her by the arm, covering her mouth so she couldn’t scream. She went for the kerchief and he did the most foolish thing of all—he pulled her tight against him to stop her.

It worked, but the feel and heat and scent of her was seared into him.

He got her back to bed, shackled her—and she wouldn’t get free of that, sealed and unsealable by his magic alone—and then retreated to stare at the ceiling on his own bed.

She’d almost seen his face. She’d almost got away. 

She’d almost seen his face. The first person in over a decade. He wished he’d let her—wished that the last person to ever see him hadn’t been Snoke. It might almost have been worth the agony.

The adrenaline didn’t ebb and it still pulsed through him when he rose to begin a new day. Rey waited for a punishment that would never come. 

Instead he gives her praise, and a silent promise that he will find a way to train her properly, so she won’t make stupid mistakes like breaching bespelled walls.

He doesn’t ask her to give back the dagger that’s missing from the sheath at his thigh. He’s not foolish enough to ever put his back to her, but she stole the blade through skill alone, and he’ll let her keep it until she tries to use it against him.

At the first opportunity he ensures her door is unbreachable to anyone but himself.

Nobody knows about her attempt except the two of them, though Snoke is extra grueling that morning. If Rey is disheartened by her failure she doesn’t show it, throwing up her shields and keeping them up despite their best efforts. No matter what they do, neither he nor Snoke can get through.

Kylo is ecstatic. Snoke is furious.

“She should have been at this stage days ago,” he spits on his way out. “We’ll see how she fares facing the Guard tomorrow.”

That chills Kylo, but he daren’t push Rey too hard for the rest of the day, lest she be too exhausted to maintain her shields when she needs them.

She does, barely. It’s the first time Kylo has seen the Guard since Trudgen’s death and they don’t utter a word to him, focusing all their ire on Rey. They’ve been out scouring the land for a trace of Maz Kanata but are without luck on that score. Even without them telling him, he knows they blame him—and Rey—for the punishment that led to the fatal duel.

When she holds them off for the third day, he takes her out to the courtyard for another spar. He’s come to realize she needs something as an outlet for the anger that maintains her shields—if she doesn’t get it out of her system when the session is over, she’s restless and irritable, and fares worse the next day. 

She’s barely paying attention to the technique he’s trying to demonstrate, gaze fixed on his torso rather than his arms as he brings the staff arcing down like a scythe. Her eyes are soft, her mouth lightly parted, her cheeks flushed with the effort she’s been putting into sparring. Wherever her thoughts are, they aren’t here and now. He’s able to knock the staff right out of her hand and send it skittering across the flagstones.

“Oi!” she yells, blinking at him as she rouses from whatever reverie she’d been lost in.

“ _ Focus _ ,” he demands. She stomps after the staff to retrieve it.

A faint bray sounds across the yard from the direction of the stables, and Kylo focuses his attention over there.

Another sound, a warning snort—yes, that’s Grimtaash. Somebody is in there with Grimtaash; somebody the stallion doesn’t like. 

“Wait here,” Kylo tells Rey.

Rey, predictably, does no such thing, trotting along behind Kylo when he crosses to the stables. Though she has the sense to hang back when Kylo strides inside, eying Grimtaash warily from outside the stall.

Nobody is with the horse, but he’s nervous anyway, lashing his tail and stomping his hooves. It doesn’t take long for Kylo to figure out why.

“Hux! What are you doing in here?”

Hux doesn’t ride. Ever. He takes a transport instead. And yet, twice now Kylo has found him in the stables, in discussion with the transport driver.

“That’s none of your concern,” Hux spits, though his eyes widen a fraction when he first spots Kylo. “Don’t you have work to be doing?”

“I am. I’m making sure your presence isn’t causing my mount too much discomfort.”

“Am I? You, girl!” Hux calls, snapping his fingers in Rey’s direction. She folds her arms in response, scowling but not saying a word back to him. “Am I causing you discomfort?”

Kylo’s vision goes white at the edges—he’s almost raised his hand to choke the air from Hux at the implication, but Rey is there first. She throws herself across the stable with her staff raised, snarling out a response to Hux.

“I am  _ not _ —”

Kylo has enough presence of mind to freeze her, stopping the solid end of the weapon colliding with Hux’s repugnant head.

“Leave it,” Kylo rumbles, relishing the way Hux has gone gray and backed up so quickly he’s almost tripped over his own feet. “He’s not worthy quarry.”

Rey does the only thing available to her—she spits at Hux. It arcs and lands with a satisfying squelch on Hux’s cheek and he begins howling, wiping at the sputum with his gloved fingers.

“Filthy—little—control your wench Kylo or I’ll—”

“Or you’ll what?” Kylo asks. “She is my apprentice, and only my protection has saved your hide today. Make those implications again and I’ll unleash her.”

“I’ll go to Snoke! She needs punishing!” It’s interesting how quickly one face can go from sallow to livid red. It contrasts poorly with Hux’s hair.

“I’ll see to it,” Kylo tells him, and Hux marches away, the driver trailing after him.

When Kylo turns, he finds that Rey has edged closer to the stall and Grimtaash has stuck his head out over the door.

“Careful, he—”

Rey is slowly stroking down the horse’s nose with a gentle smile on her face. Grimtaash, for all his usual temper, is nudging into her open palm, blowing softly from his nostrils. 

“—doesn’t normally like people,” Kylo finishes. 

“Really?” Rey asks. “I’ve not seen a horse in years. Not up close like this.” There’s something wistful in her voice. He’s not surprised—horses don’t fare well in a place like Jakku. There are creatures in other parts of the continent that thrive in the desert—he’d seen them as a boy, on tours with his parents. But Jakku was never meant to be a desert, so precious little has managed to adapt to live there. Only people and vultures, from what he’s seen.

“You’ve never ridden?”

“No.” She frowns up at Grimtaash, who starts rooting, searching for an apple or treat in her hand. For some reason it makes her giggle and beam up at the horse, and when she looks back at Kylo the smile is still on her face. His heart does something very peculiar in his chest—like it’s stopped, waiting for her to speak again before it comes back with a thump. “I don’t think I’d want to either. He’s enormous. That’s a long way to fall.”

“All the Guard learn to ride eventually. You’ll get your own mount. Something smaller, sleeker than this beast.”

He almost does something foolish and asks her about her childhood. Had she seen horses before the war, before Jakku was left a ravaged wasteland? What happened to her parents? Why, by the stars, would anyone be possessed with the idea to abandon her?

But she wouldn’t answer him, and even if she did, she’d only expect tit-for-tat, prying into his own life. A life that’s best left in the past, unclaimed and unthought of.

“Come on. No more distractions,” he tells her brusquely. “If you never beat me, you’ll never get your staff back.”

* * *

When Rey is sealed in her room that evening, Kylo goes seeking the transport driver. The staff are quartered near the training arena, which gives the stable and transport staff easy access to the outside for their work.

Kylo has never ventured far into this part of the complex before, aware his presence isn’t conducive to rest. He’s not sure how he’s going to find the driver until he stumbles his way into the kitchen, where one of the cooks sends a terrified scullery maid off to fetch the man.

The driver arrives with a flushed face and heaving lungs. 

“Sorry, my lord,” he says, bowing in repentance as if he hadn’t just materialized in under a minute. The stench of brandy on his breath might explain the nerves—not that Snoke bans indulgences among his staff, but the driver is meant to be ready to work at any moment, and if he’s under the influence he’s useless to Kylo. 

Lucky, for him, that’s not why Kylo is here.

He indicates that the man should follow him, then they retreat into the empty training arena. Kylo does a sweep for any listening ears with his magic, ensuring they’re alone and have privacy before he speaks.

“What was your business with Hux earlier today?”

“H-Hux, my lord?”

“Yes. Hux. Today.”

“Well—you’d be better speaking to Peera about that. It was her who told me, you see, and I was just passing on the message.”

“What message?”

“About the girl.”

* * *

Hux is waiting outside Kylo’s room when he returns, arms clasped behind his back and a beatific smile on his face. “Ren. You’ve been summoned.” He can barely contain his glee.

Kylo doesn’t shrug, but he may as well. He’s got a rough idea of what’s in store for him and he’s already distancing himself from his own body.

“After you,” he replies, gesturing for Hux to head in the direction of the throne room.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” 

Kylo doesn’t even dignify that with a response. There must be something Hux is expecting, something more than Kylo’s presence, but he’s got no idea what.

“The girl.”

Rey.

“What about her?”

“The Emperor has specified she’s to come with you. After all, as your apprentice, wouldn’t you consider this a useful aspect of her training?”

No. No, Kylo sees no benefit in this at all. He’d rather hoped he’d be able to shield Rey from this altogether, given how much of Snoke’s attention she’s been receiving lately. 

But Hux lingers, his grin widening at Kylo’s hesitation. “Go on. We mustn’t keep the Emperor waiting.”

Which is how Kylo finds himself unsealing Rey’s door and dragging her from her bed, sleep-warm and bewildered, towards the throne room.

“What’s going on?” she asks, trying to dig her heels in, but he can’t offer her any reassurance or even a real answer.

She’ll find out soon enough.

Snoke is in usual position in the throne, sprawled out in white studded with rubies. They look like droplets of blood against the starched linen.

“Ren! So good of you to join us. And young Rey too, excellent, excellent.”

Hux delivers them both to the foot of the dais and takes his place beside it, clearly looking forward to every minute of what’s about to unfold.

Kylo goes to his knee and forces Rey down beside him with a hand on her shoulder. She’d shaken away the mantle of stupor in the corridor and now vibrates with nervous energy.

“Now,” Snoke begins, leaning forward eagerly, “it so happens that a little birdy has been singing in my ear today. And do you know what that little birdy told me?”

Kylo knows better than to respond. Rey maintains sullen silence though she likely has no idea what he’s talking about.

The bird is Hux, who got his information from the driver, who’d heard a whisper of gossip from Peera.

“Apparently despite all my hospitality, and all my orders, our little scavenger made an attempt to escape from here a few nights ago. Now what do you say to that?”

What Kylo wants to do is deny it. He wants to tell Snoke that it didn’t happen, or that it was a training exercise with Rey. But he doesn’t. He keeps his mouth shut. It’s impossible to lie to Snoke—Snoke, who deals in lies, who has fabricated his being from untruths and deception.

“She did not succeed.”

“I can see that.” He gestures towards Rey, who is radiating defiance as usual. “Was she punished?”

Snoke’s entire training regime for her is punishment, but not only for Rey. It’s not her fault she ended up here in Snoke’s court, at his mercy. It’s Kylo’s, and he is beginning to wonder if what Snoke is subjecting her to is an elaborate punishment for him. For daring to bring her here, for not killing her where she stood in the Niima marketplace, for the first time in a decade taking an interest in something that isn’t Snoke’s orders.

Kylo keeps his silence because he cannot truthfully say yes.

“I thought as much.” Snoke raps his fingers on the arm of the throne. “Well, now seems as good a time as any to rectify that.”

It takes all of Kylo’s training to remain perfectly still. Down on one knee, head bowed, hands away from his weapons. Snoke’s form of punishment will be far worse than anything he could conjure up. Rey whimpers beside him—so faintly, Kylo must be the only person to hear her.

“Kuruk, fetch the scourge.”

The Guard in question steps forward, wielding the heavy, multi-tailed whip, and Kylo’s control almost breaks. He makes to rise before getting control over himself—every infraction will only make the situation worse.

“My lord,” he says, the modulator on the mask keeping his voice resonant and even, “she isn’t strong enough.”

“Do you have so little faith in your apprentice, Ren? Look, she doesn’t quail in the face of what is coming.”

To Rey’s credit, though she is wide-eyed and her nostrils are flared in distress, her mouth is pressed tightly shut and she refuses to take her gaze off of Snoke.

Snoke grins, baring yellowed teeth and unrestrained glee. “No, I’m quite sure she’s capable of administering ten lashes.”

Capable of— 

Ah.

“I suggest you remove your garments so they aren’t ruined,” Snoke continues. “Unless of course you’d rather keep them on for the minor protection they might afford you.”

Rey has turned to Kylo in confusion. “What—?” She stops when she sees him beginning to shuck his cape and tunic. He can’t show weakness in front of any of the witnesses, so he must face his punishment with bare skin. Realization dawns on her. “ _ No _ .”

Kylo piles his clothes neatly at the foot of the dais and awaits Snoke’s next instruction.

“Perhaps you need to show her how to handle the scourge? It’s simple enough but I’ve always found there’s a certain flick of the wrist required to make it really effective.”

Kuruk hands the scourge over to Kylo, but shadows the pair of them as Kylo and Rey rise, moving into the center of the throne room. 

“I don’t want to do this,” Rey whispers to him, but he already knew that. He’s coming to realize she doesn’t have the bloodlust to survive here.

“If you don’t, it will be worse,” he murmurs back.

He takes her hand, wraps her fingers around the handle of the scourge, then envelops her own hand in his. Her breath hitches as he guides her arm by the elbow.

“Back and swing like this—” He flicks his wrist, pushing against hers. “And follow through like that.”

Snoke chuckles. “No holding back, young Rey! He’ll not thank you for it.”

Kylo releases Rey, stepping forwards to take his position facing away from Snoke, his arms raised and hands clasped behind his head. His one solace is that Snoke can never see the pain on his face because of his own order about the mask. He might be able to feel it, even feed off of it, but he’ll never have the satisfaction of truly witnessing it.

“No, no,” Snoke says with a chuckle. “On your knees.”

Kylo obeys without waiting for Snoke to voice it as a true order.

It takes an age for Rey to strike. It feels like the entire throne room is holding its breath while she gathers the strength to make the first lash. Kylo closes his eyes and breathes deeply. This is why it’s her punishment as well as his; she isn’t made to enjoy inflicting pain. If the scourge was in Hux’s hands, it’d be over by now. 

Better this than Kylo using the whip on Rey.

_ It’s okay. I’ve had worse. _

He doesn’t know if she can hear him. Probably not. But he’d rather she just get it over with.

He gets no warning when the scourge scythes through the air; only the blistering sting across his bare skin when it lands.

“One,” he counts through the fire licking across his skin.

He’ll endure this. He always does.

* * *

When it’s done, Rey accompanies him back to their rooms. She tosses the scourge down as soon as the tenth blow lands, before Kuruk has to wrestle it away from her, and when Snoke dismisses them, she collects Kylo’s discarded clothes from the foot of the dais so he doesn’t have to bend. He wonders—worries—that she will offer to support him with walking in front of the assembled audience, but she’s learning their ways here. Instead she walks beside him, out through the doors, and only then does she murmur to him that he can lean on her if he needs to.

He doesn’t. But he appreciates her offer all the same. 

They don’t go to the bathhouse but to his room, where he directs her to the washcloths, a fresh batch of bacta poultice, and bandages. She sets him sideways in the chair and gently cleans his wounds with water warmed by the fire.

“I didn’t know it would cut this deep,” she says apologetically, even as he accepts her treatment in silent stoicism.

He begins to shrug before the movement tugs at his raw skin. “I’ve had worse. Ten lashes is nothing.”

She pauses in her ministrations. “What?”

“This is how we’ve all been trained. To survive at court is to be able to take punishment.”

He can feel her stare on his back, then her finger ghosting over a patch of skin on his shoulder blade which was spared the worst of it this time. He’s never seen his back, for obvious reasons, but he can only assume it’s a patchwork of scar tissue underneath the fresh welts and bruises.

“That’s what these are,” she murmurs, and she sounds—he doesn’t know how she sounds. Somber. He’d like to see her face, yet if he did and her expression is half as affected as her voice, it might break him. “These scars. They come from being whipped.”

“Or from fights with the other warriors here. Very few of my scars come from real battle.”

She continues to spread the poultice. “So this is why you have these things in your quarters. You use them often enough.”

“Yes.”

“What would you do if I wasn’t here?”

“For my back? Go to the bathhouse and make a servant do it.”

“Oh.”

The bandages have to be wound around his torso so she stands to do that while he raises his arms as far out as the way as he can bear. When she comes around to the front, he catches her gaze drifting down his chest, lingering on his stomach. He has less scars here than on his back but she’s probably seen the pearly, ridged mark in his flank, where he’d taken a crossbow bolt years ago.

Her cheeks are flushed when she looks away and she returns to stand behind him, tying off the bandages.

“I can’t believe you still wear the mask even like this. If I didn’t know better I’d say you sleep in it—or it’s actually your head and you don’t really have a face.”

He’s almost moved to a chuckle. “I have a face. You’ll just never see it.”

He thinks she tuts, but she doesn’t ask him why. Which is good, because it’s not a question he can answer.

“All done,” she announces, stepping away from him and washing her hands clean in the basin. “I fancy my chances a lot better when we’re sparring now.”

“You shouldn’t. I can fight through the pain.”

She glances back at him, eyes flashing with horror. “That’s barbaric.”

“That’s life.”

She looks away from him once more with a grimace of disgust, scrubbing the blood and bacta from under her nails. The poultice is pungent enough that even when she was stood close to him, her scent was covered up with the sharp, astringent smell instead. Kylo suspects it’s part of his own scent now, he has to use it often enough.

He thinks the discussion is over. Satisfied that her hands are clean, Rey steps towards the door, evidently expecting to be escorted back to her own room. Kylo rises from the chair to oblige, proud of himself when he doesn’t so much as whimper, when Rey opens her mouth.

“Why do you put up with it?”

He doesn’t need her to clarify what she means. “Snoke is the Emperor. He’s more powerful than I am.”

“But you don’t have to stay here. There’s an entire kingdom—an entire continent—out there that’s hundreds of miles away from Snoke. You of all people could leave and hide. Go to Naboo or Yavin, where he isn’t in charge and you don’t have to deal with his punishments.”

He holds a hand up. “Never,” he says quietly, and she stills, “suggest that to anyone else. You will be killed for it.”

She’s still staring at him with a hint of rebellion. “But—”

“Snoke’s reach extends further than you might think, and he seeks to extend it even further. He doesn’t call himself Emperor for nothing. One day Naboo and Yavin, and even Kashyyk will fall under his sway. There will be no hiding from him then.”

“So this is your life. And—and mine?”

He nods. “The Emperor must always be obeyed.” He opens the door, aware that his statement applies to himself far more than it does Rey. “Always.”

* * *

In truth, when Kylo told Rey that he would still be able to spar with her he’d been masking his own weakness so she wouldn’t get ideas. He could fight, if his life depended on it, but he wasn’t foolish enough to risk opening the wounds by too much vigorous movement. Instead he plans to finally introduce Rey to some basic fundamentals of wielding magic, like how to lift multiple objects at once.

His plans are derailed by Snoke. As always.

The summons comes via the transport driver, who Kylo has now bothered to learn the name of after years of the man’s service. Mitaka. He only knew that much because Peera had used it while blubbering through Kylo’s interrogation of her the night before.

Mitaka being used as a messenger is a surprise but not a large one—it’s not like the man could refuse to do what he’s told, even if he is keeping a respectful distance from Kylo in case his temper makes another appearance. Kylo barely bothers to acknowledge him, stalking away in the direction of the throne room without checking to see if the man is following.

“M-my lord!” Mitaka stutters, clearly trailing after him. “The Emperor hasn’t summoned you to the throne room.”

Kylo pauses mid-stomp. “No? Then where.”

“The courtyard.”

Ah. So that’s why Mitaka—he’d been going about his duties near the transport sheds and been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Fine.”

Kylo sees Snoke on his feet so little these days that he’d begun to wonder if the man is losing the strength to walk. Not that there’s anything frail about Snoke—but it’s taking more and more to sustain him. Kylo’s seen the evidence of that on the edges of the kingdom, which have begun to wither under everything he draws from them.

There’s still a padded chair waiting for him, carried around by one of the Guard. It makes no sense that Snoke is out here, let alone surrounded by the rest of the Imperial Guard. The stables are brimming with activity, mounts being prepared for riding, and Mitaka scuttles off towards the transport sheds to continue his own work.

Kylo approaches Snoke, bowing low rather than going to one knee. “Is there a mission, my lord?” he asks, gesturing around at the Guard.

“Indeed, Ren, indeed.” Snoke’s wizened chest gapes from the low collar of his indigo robe, and Kylo is thankful he kept to gruel for breakfast. Anything heavier would be trying to make a reappearance. “One of my little spies has brought me news of Mistress Kanata.”

“That is excellent news,” Kylo replies carefully. “Where?”

“Lothal.”

Lothal is as far flung as Jakku from the fortress but harder to travel to—the Imperial roads have to wind around the swamps it sits in, or they’ll sink. It’s at least a day’s journey in each direction.

“It’s as good a hiding place as any,” he says. “Is she still likely to be there?”

“There’s only one way to find out. I trust you’ll do well to correct your previous mistakes this time.”

Kylo takes a step back. “Me, my lord?”

“Of course you. She survived a mission you were in charge of.”

“And nobody wants to see her finally removed as I do. But the girl’s training is at a crucial juncture and—”

“I’ll ensure it continues in your absence.”

“My lord, the Guard are capable of this mission without my guidance. Kanata is wily, but she’s a weak old woman. The Resistance are a relic of the past, their power and numbers depleted to nothing. She’s a distraction from the real mission—the future.”

“Very impassioned, Ren. However, forgive me for not trusting your judgment on this matter. You will travel to Lothal with the rest of the Guard, and you will bring me Kanata’s head on a spit, or you will face the consequences. Are my orders clear?”

Even the thought, a mere spark of contrariness, of disobeying brings the first bite of discomfort. “My Lord.”

“Go. Make your preparations. Phasma will be along to collect your apprentice to move her into new lodgings while you’re gone. I’m sure we’re going to have plenty of fun in your absence.”

That’s exactly what Kylo is afraid of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on [Tumblr](https://cellar-darlings.tumblr.com/) for a teaser for chapter seven on July 5th. Or ask me things! Talk to me!


	8. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There’s been a change of plan,” Kylo tells Rey when he opens the cell door. “Bring your belongings with you.”
> 
> “What’s going on?” Rey asks as she rises from the chair she was lounging in. She doesn’t have any belongings to gather, other than her stash of food.
> 
> “I have to leave for a few days. My other duties can’t be ignored any longer.”
> 
> Rey’s stomach drops. She’d thought Kylo’s punishment was the end of it and they’d go back to their normal routine, but his foul mood makes it clear that isn’t happening. She’d heard him stomping up the corridor and he’s putting out enough angry heat in his magic signature that Rey wouldn’t need to light the fireplace after dark.
> 
> “And while you’re gone—” she prompts.
> 
> “I’ve been advised arrangements have been made for you in Phasma’s quarters. To ensure you stay put in my absence.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone - brought my posting day forward because I really wanted to share this chapter. It's a pivotal one! In the future I'm going to post and add teasers on Saturdays.
> 
> There's another warning for violence in this chapter - starts with "Her hand shakes as she strikes" and ends with "Kylo is there" - you'll be able to figure out what happened in between.

“There’s been a change of plan,” Kylo tells Rey when he opens the cell door. “Bring your belongings with you.”

“What’s going on?” Rey asks as she rises from the chair she was lounging in. She doesn’t have any belongings to gather, other than her stash of food.

“I have to leave for a few days. My other duties can’t be ignored any longer.”

Rey’s stomach drops. She’d thought Kylo’s punishment was the end of it and they’d go back to their normal routine, but his foul mood makes it clear that isn’t happening. She’d heard him stomping up the corridor and he’s putting out enough angry heat in his magic signature that Rey wouldn’t need to light the fireplace after dark.

“And while you’re gone—” she prompts.

“I’ve been advised arrangements have been made for you in Phasma’s quarters. To ensure you stay put in my absence.”

She shivers. Just like that, her privacy has been stripped from her, and she’s being thrust from the uneasy truce she has with Kylo into dealing with somebody she doubts wants her to succeed. 

But there’s no point complaining. If Kylo could change it, he would have already.

“I’m ready. I have everything I need.”

Including the dagger at her back. 

Hiding that from Phasma is going to be more challenging than hiding it from Kylo, but Rey will do whatever it takes to ensure she isn’t left without a weapon while her only ally is gone.

She trails after him, and it’s impossible to tell from how he’s moving that he’s injured. She’d changed his bandages this morning, adding more poultice, and while she’s never had to deal with lash wounds before, she thinks they’re better healed than they ought to be. The bruising, which should still be livid purple, has faded to greens and yellows, while the edges of the broken skin have already knitted closed. Whatever is in that salve is working miracles.

For that, Rey is thankful. The mess of his back had haunted her before and during sleep. She can still feel the weight of the scourge in her hand, her hand flexing open to drop it whenever the sensation returns. She’d cracked the length of it at Kylo’s back far more than ten times every time she’d closed her eyes, seeing the skin split open with every stroke.

Almost worse than those dreams had been the ones where she’d tended to him afterwards, long minutes spent touching his skin and being inches away from him. Beneath the blood and bruises lay the firm landscape of his musculature, which she’d only glimpsed the night of her escape. His shoulders are easily half the length of her staff, and there’s something to the slump of them that suggests Kylo might not be fully comfortable with his height and size. She’s never noticed it before but now she sees it, in the curve of his back. But she also sees the many silvery pathways that make up his previous scars—years and years of lashings built up over each other.

It makes her want to be very gentle with him.

As she’d wrapped bandages around him she’d ended up grazing her hands across his belly. There were less scars on his front, all of that pearly white skin still glistening with sweat. His chest, which had largely been hidden under a cowl that night of her escape attempt was—enormous. Two mountains of pure muscle, leading down over his ribs to his abdomen, which was made up of more hard, defined brawn. It almost seemed a shame to cover his torso, and that thought had her flushing and rushing to finish her work.

But in her dreams, she’d run her fingers across him, exploring the ridges and planes of his body. For once, Rey was thankful for the mask when he arrived with breakfast, because if she’d had to look him in the eye she’d have been incapable of it.

She’d heard a few women in Niima talk about their interest in men, and Rey had always thought the subject of those discussions was nonsense. What use was a firm stomach or a toned back to her? What was attractive about big arms and muscled thighs? Those things might indicate a man who’d be able to work hard and feed her, but she took care of herself and wouldn’t look sideways at any of the men in Niima, who couldn’t be trusted not to gut a lover and steal their belongings. 

The only stirrings she’d ever felt had been when reading stories about good, kind men who protected their loved ones. Even that had been fleeting.

Now she’s starting to understand that she was too hasty in dismissing the older women as addled fools. Maybe it’s because she’s getting enough food that her mind and body are able to focus on more than the next meal, but seeing Kylo up close has stirred something within her. Something she wants to squelch and destroy because it makes her skin crawl as much as it makes her belly leap.

It’s just because he’s the only man she’s spent any amount of time with. He’s not good or kind, and she’s never even seen his face. Nor will she, apparently. This delayed interest is unimportant and a matter of circumstance, nothing to do with him.

Which is helpful. Because now he’s going away and leaving her alone with Phasma. She can only imagine what the other woman has in store for her.

She finds out soon enough, when Kylo deposits her inside the training arena and heads away without so much as a goodbye. Phasma is waiting for Rey in the very center, arms behind her back, her stance every inch the soldier. Her armor somehow gleams in the paltry light.

For the first time since Rey has stepped foot in the arena, Snoke isn’t here.

Phasma follows Rey’s gaze to the spot where Snoke’s chair usually waits. “It is just you and I today,” she confirms. “Though I’ve been following your training closely and have been briefed by the Emperor as to what he expects from me.”

Rey glances around the room, looking for a hint as to what they might be doing. Phasma has no weapons with her, not even her customary rifle. The feather mats intended for dueling remain propped up against the walls. But there is a mound in one corner, coming to Rey’s knee height, and she squints to try and figure out what it is.

“Now, I am as unimpressed with Ren’s training of you as the Emperor is,” Phasma continues. “And he has indicated that if we make good progress here, he may consider transferring your apprenticeship to me instead.”

“You don’t want that.” It’s the truth, but Rey also means that she doesn’t want it either.

There’s a blast of icy air, and then Rey is reeling, on the floor with her face exploding with pain.

“I didn’t give you permission to speak,” Phasma says, as Rey cradles her face.

She hit her. A backhanded slap rather than a punch, but it was enough to knock Rey off her feet and split her lip—she can taste blood and pokes tentatively at her mouth with her tongue, hissing at the sting when she finds the wound.

She glares, but it’s all she can do. Even though the dagger between her shoulder blades itches to be used, it’s no good against Phasma with all of that shiny armor covering the places where Rey might do some damage.

Instead, she shoves herself back to her feet, folding her arms and waiting for Phasma to continue.

“Though you are right,” Phasma says in those lofty tones. Without the helmet she probably has a pleasant voice—rather deep, for a woman, but melodic and rich. With the mask, though, its metallic distortion is grating. “I have no great desire for you to become my apprentice. But I do as the Emperor commands me, and if you are capable of being whittled into a sharp instrument, I’ll do whatever I need to to ensure it.”

She leads Rey over to the pile, which now she’s closer, Rey can see is a mound of beans. Differently colored beans—some are a deep ruddy brown, others are pale and creamy. 

“I need you to sort these.”

“Sort them—?” Rey hasn’t asked permission to speak this time, but Phasma doesn’t seem to care.

“Into piles. One for each kind of bean.”

Rey finds herself blinking at Phasma, waiting for the rest of her instructions. What this has to do with learning to use magic, she doesn’t understand, but given that she’d had visions of Phasma wielding the scourge at her this is deliriously simple. When nothing more is forthcoming, she shrugs and deposits herself on the floor beside the pile cross-legged, reaching for a bean with an outstretched hand.

Phasma smacks her hand away.

“Ow!”

“You aren’t to use your hands, foolish girl. You aren’t to touch them at all.”

Oh.

It makes sense, even if Rey wants to mutter at Phasma that she didn’t tell her that. But she doesn’t want another slap, so she rolls her eyes and focuses on the pile.

She can do this. She’s moved her staff around with her mind. She unlocked the door. This is tedious, but perfectly doable.

Phasma strides over to a bench near the wall which she straddles and sets herself down on. “I hope this doesn’t take all day,” she tells Rey. “Let’s add some further motivation, shall we? You won’t get to eat until the task is complete.”

As if that’s enough to intimidate Rey. She turns her attention to the pile, and begins.

* * *

It’s beyond tedious. Rey’s back aches, her legs are numb from the position she’s sitting in, and her belly is rumbling—betraying her. Apparently regular meals have spoiled it and now she can’t go long without it reminding her to fill it. 

She’s been at this for hours, and is barely a third of the way through the pile. 

The problem is that it takes control. A lot of control. Focusing on an individual bean and lifting it, then moving it across to the new pile—all of her being has to be directed to the task. And at first, once she’s got the measure of it, that’s fine. Only, Rey isn’t used to doing one thing for so long. She’s used to spending her time working with her hands, her mind free to wander and occupy itself with other things. For this, the second her attention wavers, she drops whatever bean she’d dealing with and has to start again.

She’s tired, her attention is lost, and it’s only getting worse.

Phasma sighs from her bench. “If I’d known it was going to take this long, I’d have brought a book. My word, he really hasn’t taught you much of anything, has he?”

Rey bites her tongue before she can grumble a reply—about how if Snoke left Kylo to train her without interfering, she’d probably know much more by now. Instead, the only thing she’s really learned is how to build really good mental shields, and those are no use when sorting a pile of beans. Neither is her anger, and she’s very aware of that, because her frustration has only made the task that much harder.

“Well, I’m sorry to say that I’ve no intention of wasting my evening watching you do this.” Phasma rises, coming to give the little pile of red beans a derisory poke with her foot. “You know, there’s such a simple method to this. One that takes moments. Look.” She pauses, and there’s a brief flare of her frosty presence, before the beans begin to flow. They all shift at once, like the sands of the Sinking Fields when they opened up to swallow something—red to one side, cream to another. Within moments, Phasma has two neat, separate mounds.

Then she mixes them all back together.

“We’ll start again tomorrow.”

Rey growls. “You just—!”

“Undid all your progress? Yes. Because I expect you to make a better go of it tomorrow. Come, I’m still going to ensure you’re washed, even if I won’t feed you. I don’t want you stinking my rooms up.”

* * *

Phasma’s quarters are nowhere near as barren as Kylo’s and easily three times the size. They’re in a part of the complex Rey hasn’t ventured into, beyond the throne room, and somewhere nearby Rey can feel Snoke’s ravenous presence itching away in the back of her mind. She’d much rather go back to her empty little cell.

The fire is roaring when they return, casting a warm glow over the space, which is dominated by a solid wooden bed that could easily sleep two people in. Well. Maybe two people Rey’s size—she’s not sure about Phasma. There are rugs on the floor, and even a set of windows, though they don’t look out at anything except the base of the fortress wall. 

Phasma takes her through a side door into an inner room, which turns out to contain a private bathtub set into the floor. Rey’s already washed and changed, but Phasma tosses her a blanket and pillow. 

“You can sleep in there,” she tells Rey, shutting the door behind her.

It’s chilly and dark in here. The door is solid, keeping the warmth of the fireplace out, and there aren’t any windows. Rey does her best to make do, curling up inside the tub and trying to ignore the prickling rawness of Snoke somewhere nearby.

At least her belly isn’t quite so empty. She’s got hiding places for food all over the fortress, and some of them were in the bathhouse. Since Phasma had opted to wait outside for her, it’d given Rey plenty of opportunity to retrieve some oatcakes from a nook near the hearth. 

It means her stomach isn’t as angry with her as it could be when they make the trek back to the training arena in the morning, where Rey swears the number of beans has grown since the day before. She’s got a crook in her neck from the awkward sleeping position which she can’t seem to shift no matter how much she stretches, and her head feels like it’s been stuffed full of linen because she slept so poorly. She’d been exhausted, but every time she drifted off, Snoke’s presence flared and jolted her awake.

Phasma doesn’t say a word to her, traipsing off to her bench with an enormous volume that Rey can’t even read the name of on the spine. Rey takes up the same perch as yesterday, cross-legged on the floor so she can stare at the beans.

She’s not sure what the next step is. Clearly Phasma doesn’t expect her to do this bean-by-bean, but to sift the entire pile magically. Rey closes her eyes and tries to reach out to the beans so she can…commune with them. Only, beans don’t really have much of a presence. When she curls her grip around one, her mind locked around it, she can feel that it’s there but she’s got no idea what color it is. They all feel the same to her. Small pieces of irrelevance that are indistinguishable from each other.

She goes back to plan A. Sifting them one by one.

She swears she hears Phasma tut and sigh from behind the massive book.

When her left foot begins to tingle, numb and painful all at once because of how she’s been resting on it, she decides to try Phasma’s way again. If Phasma isn’t going to give Rey any guidance, then what else is Rey meant to do? 

“You really haven’t had any magical training before you arrived here, have you?” Phasma asks, depositing the book beside her on the bench with a resounding thump.

Rey frowns as the bean she was moving drops back on to the pile, her concentration broken. 

“Who was I supposed to learn from? There’s a dearth of sorcery schools in Jakku.”

She thinks the sound Phasma makes is a brief laugh. “But you haven’t always lived in Jakku. I can hear it in your voice—I could right from the beginning. You must have spent your childhood elsewhere, before the Emperor took the throne. Did you not receive training when you were young?”

“I had absolutely no idea that I was capable of doing any of this until Kylo turned up,” Rey tells her honestly.

Something shifts in Phasma, her energy flushing momentarily warm with excitement. Rey has no idea what’s caused that, but it does caution her to tread carefully.

“How very peculiar,” Phasma replies after a pregnant pause. “Usually magical ability begins manifesting very young—did you parents never notice any strange occurrences around you?”

Rey shifts from foot to foot, uncomfortable as ever with any questioning about her past. There’s always a silent warning in the back of her mind, urging caution. She might not know the full truth of her origins, but she’s sure even a partial truth is a weapon in the hands of someone like Phasma.

“I wouldn’t know. They’ve been dead for a very long time.”

“What about your guardians? Did nobody ever comment on you doing unusual things?”

Rey wants to laugh at the idea of having a guardian. “For most of my life, the closest thing I had to somebody watching out for me was Unkar Plutt. He was the man who ran Niima, and he didn’t care what any of us did so long as we were earning coin for him. I doubt he paid enough attention to notice I was able to make things float if I didn’t even know about it.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps somebody did notice and was protecting you.”

Rey does laugh at that. “You didn’t know Unkar. He’d have sold me out for a handful of coppers and not thought twice about it.”

“Hmm.” Phasma shifts on the bench, bringing both of her legs around to face Rey. “But what about before Jakku? Surely you weren’t there when it was ravaged—a child wouldn’t have survived that.”

Rey shrugs. “Jakku was always like that, as far as I knew.”

“So you  _ did _ live somewhere else. Before that.”

Rey considers her words carefully, wielding honesty as a weapon against being caught out. “I think so. I’ve no idea where.”

“And somebody took you to Jakku even after it was so badly devastated? I can only think that somebody was hiding you there.”

Rey’s heart lurches in her chest as Phasma stumbles across that nugget of truth. “I’ve already told you—I wouldn’t know,” Rey says sharply. “It’s not like I ever knew what was going on. Nobody ever said to me ‘hey, we’re taking you to the arse-end of the world and dumping you there, good luck.’”

“You would have been very young. Maybe they wanted to protect you from being killed for using magic. That  _ was _ the first law Snoke passed when he took the throne.”

“What a stupid plan that was, then.” Rey waves a hand around the training arena. “If they’d told me that, maybe I’d have known not to flaunt my powers in front of the Imperial Guard when they came for a visit.”

In truth, she’s now beginning to think that Phasma might not be far off the mark. She’d always assumed she was taken to Jakku so that she wouldn’t be killed for being the daughter of rebellion fighters. But maybe her fuzzy memories of her childhood aren’t just caused by fading away over time—what if they’d used magic to wipe themselves out of her mind?

She returns her attention to the beans, but in her mind’s eye something else is unfurling. A memory, fuzzy and indistinct, like it’s barely there. 

The arms around her in Unkar Plutt’s workshop aren’t her mother or her father. They’re somebody else, somebody who’d been taking care of her since her parents went away to fight. Somebody else who barters with Plutt for a good price for Rey, the same masculine voice who’d told her that her parents were dead not long before they began their journey to Jakku, the same arms who peel her away and leave her behind once Rey’s worth has been agreed upon. 

“Or maybe,” she continues, “whoever ended up looking after me when they were gone didn’t want the bother of me, so took me to Jakku because they knew people there were paying decent money for child laborers.”

Rey realizes too late she should have kept her mouth shut and insisted on being fed before engaging in conversation with Phasma. It’s too late now. She pushes herself up, full of restless energy and with a need to get the blood pumping in her legs again before they fall off.

“The world is a cruel place,” she tells Phasma. “I’ve known that for most of my life. Jakku is the very worst place to leave a defenseless child—I was the only one out of all the other children I knew who made it to adulthood. Just me. I can’t believe for a second that I was left there for my protection because by rights I should be long dead anyway. So I’m sorry I can’t answer your questions about where I’m from, because I will only talk to you about Niima. It made me who I am.”

Phasma pauses for a long time before speaking, as if weighing up what Rey has said. “Very well. Forgive me for my curiosity, given you came in here with no paperwork to prove your lineage.”

“I never had any.”

“I see that now. You seem restless—would you prefer to take a break? I understand Ren spars with you sometimes.”

Phasma retrieves a pair of staffs from the chest and sends one sailing across the space to Rey.

“This hardly seems fair,” Rey says to Phasma. “You’ve got all your armor on. I’ve got nothing.” Kylo wears his own kind of armor, but it’s nothing like Phasma’s. He’s still susceptible to injury if she hits him in the right spot.

“I’ve barely ever used one of these things,” Phasma replies dismissively. “And without the armor you’ll be quicker to move.”

She lets Rey begin the fight, bringing her staff up to block Rey’s blows almost a fraction too slow. Her reflexes are good but she either really is unused to fighting like this, or she’s letting Rey get confident.

“You know, I grew up in a town called Parnassos,” Phasma says after a few minutes. “Before the Emperor gained power, it was a frightful, lawless place. The Queen made little effort to control the province because we were so far flung from her. My parents died when I was in my teens, and no help came.”

“I’m sorry,” Rey tells her, reflexively.

Phasma shrugs. “I had all this power flowing through me, and what good did it do me? It helped me steal food when I was starving, but nobody cared about my potential. That is, until I was introduced to Snoke.”

Phasma’s movements are becoming surer as she speaks, each jolt of the staffs clashing together ringing down Rey’s arms. She can feel it in her teeth. Phasma is almost as large as Kylo so despite the other woman’s supposed lack of confidence with the weapon, Rey fears that she still won’t win this.

“He promised that those of us with magic should be treated better than everybody else,” Phasma continues. “Elevated to the highest levels of court where we could fulfill our true potential, unlike the royal family who were squandering the power in their bloodline. More than that, he promised order and discipline. No more lawlessness, no more squalor. Everybody in their rightful place and the world functioning as it ought to.”

Rey can’t help thinking how Snoke failed in that mission, if the present state of Jakku is anything to go by. 

“So, naturally I followed him. He showed me what I was capable of in so many ways, and when the time came, I helped him achieve what he was capable of.”

Rey has no idea why Phasma is telling her any of this. Are they supposed to commiserate over terrible childhoods?

“During those early years, our work had to be a secret. Snoke had been accused of being a traitor to Alderaan—lies, because how can one commit treason when you seek to improve the land over those who would limit it? But he was silenced, and we worked in secret. Secrets were our currency in those days, moving from town to town to find those who would support our cause.”

For the first time, Phasma almost lands a blow on Rey, who deflects it just in time. Yeah, Phasma was definitely underselling her skills.

“Sometimes we heard whispers about the kinds of people who opposed Snoke’s work. They were the precursors to what became the Resistance, I suppose, loyalists to the monarchy. Every last one a fool. But I did plenty of traveling around the Eastern regions during that time since it was close to my home turf. People were more willing to be loose lipped because they thought me local. Did you know that Luke Skywalker is supposed to be hiding somewhere in the kingdom?” “

“Luke Skywalker is a myth,” Rey retorts.

“They do love a good fairytale, the Resistance. You know, in Kijimi I once spoke to this fellow by the name of Dameron—”

Rey screams as Phasma’s staff smacks her in the hip. 

Her concentration had slipped. The name Dameron—buried deep in her memory, now surfacing again.

Phasma keeps speaking, her words fading in and out of Rey’s hearing as she reels, darting away from the next blow. 

“—He was a big believer in all of that nonsense—”

A Dameron in Kijimi. The hooded stranger who’d sold her to Unkar Plutt had mentioned that.  _ “We’ve come from Kijimi, been a long journey… _ ”

“—And do you know, he’d spoken about how the rebellion leaders had this daughter who could do incredible things—”

And Rey knew the name Dameron from somewhere. She couldn’t associate it with anyone, but she’d heard it. A long time ago.

“—The most gifted adept people had seen in a long time. A sweet little thing. Would probably be about your age now, if she’d lived.”

So Phasma knows.

Heart hammering in chest, fear clawing at her throat, Rey does the only thing she knows how. She keeps fighting.

Phasma knows and she’s made it clear to Rey that she does. Kriff, Phasma seems to know more than Rey herself does—that after her parents had died, she’d passed through Kijimi in the custody of a man called Dameron, who’d taken her to Jakku and sold her. That Rey’s powers had manifested when she was younger, but they’d been suppressed alongside her memories, until they couldn’t be anymore. That Rey’s parents were deep in the rebellion and Rey ought to die because of that alone, eradicated alongside all who were associated with the rebellion.

_ Kriff. _

Rey doesn’t know if anybody else knows what Phasma does. Maybe. The questions today have been to tease out how much Rey herself knows, to lure her into revealing herself, and she has. Like an idiot. Thinking it didn’t matter anymore.

The fight is for her life now.

Phasma advances, raining blow after blow that Rey is barely able to block from landing. Rey panics, letting herself be backed into a corner, overpowered by Phasma’s sheer size and skill.

_ No. _

She’s beaten Kylo before and he has those things too. Rey had used strategy to do that.

_ You can win this.  _ The voice she’s heard during her training sessions with Snoke rings through her head.  _ You’re strong enough. _

She feints. Allows herself to get whacked on the thigh with the end of Phasma’s staff, letting her grunt of pain ring through the rafters of the arena.

She follows up with a double feint—telegraphing right, waiting for Phasma to go left, and then going right anyway. Using her magic to push herself up into an arc, yanking Phasma’s staff away and slamming into her feet first and with both weapons pinning her to the ground when she falls.

And she does fall. Heavily, all that armor dragging her down, her center of gravity overcome with the power Rey puts into her swing. Because Phasma is good, but she’s not really a melee fighter—she uses the rifle to pick people off from a distance.

Rey uses that to her advantage, getting Phasma pinned underneath her, arms and torso trapped underneath where Rey straddles her. Phasma bucks, trying to throw Rey off, and she will. It’s inevitable. But Rey goes for the helmet anyway, twisting it off so that Phasma’s face is exposed to the room—

She is human. Ordinary. Pale skin ruddied with exertion. Thin lips and a lined forehead. Short cropped hair the color of straw.

—And Phasma is screaming, screaming in agony, a loud, awful, low wail that Rey wants to recoil from. She doesn’t understand it because she hasn’t done anything yet. Phasma continues bucking but it’s less strategic, less like she’s trying to throw Rey off and more—like she’s writhing or something.

_ Finish it. It’s your only chance. _

People have come running, and in the back of her head Rey can feel a familiar presence coming towards her. Rey only has moments before she will be pulled away from Phasma, before Phasma can reveal to the world that Rey needs to be killed, and Rey is coming to realize that she doesn’t want to die at all. She wants to be free, but she won’t give Snoke the satisfaction of winning by killing her.

She reaches up to slide the dagger out from between her shoulder-blades and arcs her hand downward.

Her hand shakes as she strikes. 

She should go for Phasma’s neck—bare and vulnerable as it is like this, but she can’t bring herself to do that. Instead she strikes through the armor, finding the spaces where the plates come together, where a little dagger can slip through and slide into Phasma’s abdomen like butter.

Once. Twice. Three times.

Blood flows and Phasma keeps screaming. Hands grasp Rey, under her arms to lift her and drag her away while Phasma jerks and thrashes, blood blossoming on her lips.

Kylo is there, holding Rey back. She doesn’t know where he’s come from, only that he’s the one who pulled her off of Phasma, who takes the dagger from her hand.

“What have you done?”

* * *

Rey got remarkably little blood on herself. There’s some on her hands, which Kylo wipes away with his cloak, but she was dragged away from Phasma before things got truly messy.

There’s still blood under her nails. She distantly notes it as she observes the tremor running through her hands now they’re empty, her ears ringing with the sound of Phasma’s screams even if they’ve stopped. 

She’s a killer.

Servants came running, peeling away the armor around her torso to get to her wounds and press on them to stem the bleeding. Somebody put her helmet back on, and Rey can’t think of a single reason why that would help in any way.

But Phasma’s not dead, her chest still rising and falling. Plates of her shiny armor lie discarded on the floor like fragments of a war machine, dulled and crusted with dried blood.

“She’ll live,” Kylo says once he’s observed all this, still keeping a tight grip on Rey’s upper arms. He sounds disappointed. “Unless infection gets her. You didn’t cut deep enough—there was no point going through her armor. Her neck, or her eye. They’d have been sufficient if you drove the blade deep enough.”

So he is disappointed. In Rey. Because she didn’t kill Phasma properly.

Rey isn’t disappointed. No, hearing that Phasma will live has actually brought a swell of relief with it.

Phasma is stretchered away and as Rey watches her leave, she catches sight of Hux lurking beyond the arena doorway. His attention swivels from Phasma’s prone form, still bleeding through the white cloth of the stretcher, to Rey. Even across the room, Rey can see his eyes narrow at her, his hand grinding into a fist at his side.

Rey bears her teeth in his direction. She’s not afraid of him.

“Control your brat, Ren.” Hux yells. “Word spreads fast. The Emperor wants to see you.”

Kylo has to actually drag her along this time, hands so tight around her arms there will be bruises, because Rey knows that nothing good awaits her in the throne room. If not death, then the scourge, and she doesn’t want either. But Kylo is merciless, emotionless, and as difficult to change direction as the tide.

Snoke’s mood is obvious when Rey is towed in front of him; the air around him feels tighter than normal, her throat and lungs dry from the way he sucks all that’s good from it. He’s angry, and not angry in the kind of way Kylo often is, hot flashes of destructive rage. No, Snoke is so angry it’s like he’s sucked more than air away, his anger so fine that he’s feeling nothing at all. He’s a void on the throne.

“Ren. Back from your mission empty handed—and so soon. I thought I made the parameters of your work clear.”

“My lord. I have it on good authority that Mistress Kanata merely passed through Lothal and is now in Naboo.”

Snoke hisses. “With Leia Organa?”

Kylo hesitates before continuing. “So our spy in Naboo says.”

“Then I ought to have given you twenty lashes the other night. But nevermind that—I hear the little scavenger has finally done something interesting,” he breathes, low and dangerous.

“My lord,” Kylo responds, while Rey says nothing at all. She wouldn’t classify what she’d done as interesting. Awful. It had turned her sick to her stomach when she’d seen how close she came to killing somebody. This place has done more to turn her towards violence than a decade in Jakku ever did.

“Phasma is one of my most loyal servants. She’s been with me since she was younger than yourself, Rey, and this is how she is repaid? What do you have to say for yourself?”

“They were sparring, my lord,” Kylo says. “Rey was well within the rules to do what she did.”

“A dagger, though?”

“No weapon is out of bounds. That Rey was able to pin Phasma as she did and get close enough to use the dagger shows that Phasma was weak and Rey bested her fairly. She should not be punished for that—she wasn’t trying to escape. She was proving her worth as a fighter.”

“I see.” Snoke sprawls back in the chair. “You make an excellent point. Perhaps no punishment is in order then, and we can treat Phasma’s wounds as her own punishment for lack of care.”

“I believe that would be best, my lord.”

“Of course—young Rey did shy away from a killing blow. If she had truly wanted to prove herself, Phasma would be dead. A good death to prove Rey’s place in my court and ascend to Phasma’s place.”

The blood starts pounding in Rey’s ears.

And then Snoke turns his frightful smile on her. “You see, everyone here has secured their place with a death. One good, powerful death, enough to please me. Even Hux here found a way, didn’t you? Disposing of his own father! I do like a touch of patricide. It’s good for the soul—I killed my own father, years ago.”

Rey vaguely wonders who Kylo’s death was. Han Solo, probably. The prince too. She’s sure Snoke enjoyed both of those deaths immensely.

“That’s not why you attacked Phasma though, is it child?” he continues. “Power and glory wouldn’t drive you to such bloodthirsty measures.” He gestures Hux forwards. “Your report.”

Hux stands at Snoke’s side with his hands behind his back, sallow but haughty.

“My lord, ever since the urchin arrived I have had doubts about her.”

Snoke makes a dismissive noise. “It was Phasma herself who first raised her concerns, was it not?”

“I—yes my lord, I suppose it was. Forgive me. Phasma noted that the stray had an unusual accent for one claiming to hail from Jakku.”

“I claimed no such thing,” Rey cuts in.

Snoke silences her with a motion of his hand. Hux allows himself half a smile before continuing.

“That and her lack of paperwork had us curious indeed. We knew she had to be from the Eastern reaches of the kingdom so we sent out agents to investigate in the major towns. Checking the birth rolls, asking in the taverns about little girls lost in the war, before we were able to find records of a handful of girls who might be her.”

Rey can’t breathe. She’s not sure if Snoke’s done something to her, or if he can’t help himself from siphoning off her energy, or if it’s just fear choking her up this way. Attacking Phasma had been a waste of time, then. Hux was in it all along.

“And then we found her. In Takodana—the death recorded of a war orphan, in the year you ascended to the throne.”

“I see.”

Kylo’s fingers are digging into her arm tight enough to stop the blood flowing—her fingers are starting to tingle. Her face is wet, and she blinks before she realizes it’s because she’s crying.

“The girl we’d been looking for,” Hux says breathlessly. “Kira Reyana Ematt. Daughter of Kira and Cal. Known to her family and friends as Rey.”

“An Ematt. How interesting.” The way Snoke says interesting is so different than he said it before—now, Rey realizes that being interesting is the most dangerous thing in the world. “I remember your mother at the Battle of Mustafar. A fierce woman—she was cut to ribbons by young Trudgen—that was his good death. Your father died trying to save her and met a similar fate. Even your grandfather old Cal waded into battle, not that he lasted long. Though your family wasn’t known for their magical ability.”

“Our sources confirm that the girl was known to display magical prowess even at a very young age,” Hux continues. “When the decree came that all magical users had to be turned over to the court for testing or die, she disappeared, apparently dead.”

“Of course she did. Smuggled out to Jakku to try and keep her from my attention. Such a waste.”

Kylo hasn’t said a word through all of this. Rey can’t feel any emotions coming from him, and she doesn’t think she wants to.

“So you see, young Rey,” Snoke says, practically purring the words. “Trying to kill Phasma, I could forgive—if you’d had the guts to follow through. But that soft, soft heart is of no use in my court whatsoever. And all the anger in the world isn’t going to convince me to risk keeping the daughter of rebel leaders around, waiting for the day she tries to kill me too. And you, Ren. Where was your diligence? Where were your brains in all of this—but you weren’t thinking, were you? If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Like, for instance, my allowing you to keep the girl when you dragged her in here, full of spit and vinegar and absolutely no respect for me at all. ”

The smile drops and he spits a new order at Kylo.

“Dispose of her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on [Tumblr](https://cellar-darlings.tumblr.com/) for a teaser for chapter eight on July 18th.


	9. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Dispose of her.”
> 
> Kylo almost sways at the order, but he can’t show weakness, even now. Instead he nods.
> 
> “My lord.” The response sounds distant to his own ears, white static filling his head as his thoughts race, trying to unpick the order.
> 
> He can’t disobey—already it is taking him the greatest effort not to raise his sword and end Rey’s life. But he picks the words apart in his head, desperately looking for a loophole.
> 
> His hand moves to the hilt of his sword of its own volition, his body ready to obey the order even if inside he is screaming at the thought of it. He has to clench his fist, grit his teeth and refuse to move any part of himself, in case when he does it is the end of it all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone and welcome to us breaking the 50k word barrier! You all seemed to - enjoy (?) - that cliffhanger and this is a pivotal chapter. I think some people are anticipating a "throne room" fight scene after that so - let's see if you're right!
> 
> Minor references to sexual assault courtesy of Snoke and Hux but they really are only in passing, and we've got a chapter without actual violence for once!
> 
> I meant to say this at the end of chapter seven but forgot: Rey's family name is taken from Major Ematt in The Last Jedi. The actor sadly died in the last few months because of Covid so I decided it would be a nice tribute to use that name rather than making her a Kenobi or using another well-known canon name.

“Dispose of her.”

Kylo almost sways at the order, but he can’t show weakness, even now. Instead he nods.

“My lord.” The response sounds distant to his own ears, white static filling his head as his thoughts race, trying to unpick the order.

He can’t disobey—already it is taking him the greatest effort not to raise his sword and end Rey’s life. But he picks the words apart in his head, desperately looking for a loophole.

His hand moves to the hilt of his sword of its own volition, his body ready to obey the order even if inside he is screaming at the thought of it. He has to clench his fist, grit his teeth and refuse to move any part of himself, in case when he does it is the end of it all.

There  _ must _ be a loophole. He can’t do what Snoke intends. He can’t kill Rey. Even now that he knows more about who she is and where she comes from.

_ Dispose of her. Dispose of her. Dispose of her. _

He takes a step towards her, the pressure building inside of his skull. Inaction is disobedience and his body will not allow it.

_ Dispose of her,  _ his brain taunts instead.  _ Throw her away like the servants would get rid of the remnants of a meal, like she is nothing and no-one. Dispose— _ remove _ her. Get her out of here. _

His hand closes around her upper arm, giving an experimental tug, and the pressure eases. He takes a step backwards, away from Snoke and towards the doors, and begins to drag her with him. Rey, temporarily frozen in shock and fear, doesn’t resist.

“Where are you taking her?” Snoke demands.

“Somewhere more suitable, my lord,” Kylo replies, the words coming easily. “She’s caused enough mess to be cleared up today, and her blood isn’t fit to sully this floor.”

The burning doesn’t begin. Somehow he is successfully fulfilling Snoke’s order; Snoke sees Rey as something to be thrown away, used up and tossed aside like the machines she’d spent her life picking through. But Kylo won’t kill her. Instead he can remove her from the fortress, disposing of her in that sense.

There. That’s the loophole. And because he isn’t writhing in anguish right now, it’s a valid one.

“Your quarters, then? By all means, take your time with her,” Snoke agrees with a leer. “This is your final chance to do so.”

The relief, the rush of triumph Kylo feels, is quickly overwhelmed by the knowledge that his success is down to Snoke underestimating him. Snoke believes he has such control over him, and believes he knows him so well, that he’s eager to dismiss this as such base appetites.

Kylo pauses only to shove a kerchief into Rey’s mouth, binding it behind her head so she cannot scream out loud. They will expect screams; he needs them to rationalize her silence.

It triggers her instinct to fight and she struggles against his grip. She kicks him in the leg and he grunts, but doesn’t let go, dragging her out past the doors. She’s desperate, wide-eyed, the reality of her predicament setting in.

With the doors firmly closed and the corridor empty—Kylo reaching out to search for nearby energy signatures and finding none—he bends to whisper in Rey’s ear.

“Stop it,” he says. “I’m going to save your life.”

“ _ What? _ ” she asks, muffled by the kerchief.

“Snoke means for me to kill you, but I’m not going to do that,” he murmurs, as quietly as the mask allows. “Come with me.”

“What?” she asks again, but there’s no time to explain. Hux will be out to follow as soon as Snoke releases him. Hux won’t want to watch Rey be killed if it’s a messy death—he’s far too queasy—but he’ll be seeking some sort of proof anyway.

He takes Rey back towards their rooms, down the quiet, empty corridor at the back of the fortress. “If you have anything that you don’t want to leave behind, now is your final chance to retrieve it.” 

She nods, and he ushers her into her room, where she rips the kerchief away as soon as the door is closed behind them. 

“What is going on?” she hisses.

“Snoke told me to dispose of you. So I must.”

“But you aren’t going to kill me.”

“No. I’m going to take you somewhere safe where you can hide. Bring whatever you’ll need to survive.”

“Fine.” She makes quick work of retrieving a prodigious stash of food from places he hadn’t even considered—he’s surprised the fortress hasn’t developed a rat problem, though Rey would probably just view rats as a convenient source of protein and roast them in her fireplace.

She bundles the food into the kerchief, and Kylo checks the corridor to ensure they’re alone. He extinguishes all the torches bar one, lifting one from its bracket to light their way. Then he leads her out of their quarters, a hand at her back to steer her even further down the drafty hallway towards its terminus. They pass two more cells, both empty—nobody wants to be quartered this close to Kylo—until they’re left facing a blank wall. 

In the flickering torchlight, it’s possible to trace the outline of an old, bricked-up doorway. It’d been blocked off long before Snoke’s fortress consumed the original building, arousing no suspicions during the fresh construction. 

He presses his hand up against a section of the wall and pushes his energy into it, feeling for the cracks and gaps around the stones.

“What are you doing now?” Rey whispers, eyes widening as she feels him direct his magic into the wall.

The stones begin to move. Like the wall is being constructed from the top down, brick by brick, rippling aside to reveal darkness beyond, until the original doorway gapes open onto the dusty old passage on the other side.

Rey’s jaw hangs open as she takes in what she’s seeing and what they just did, though it snaps shut when Kylo gestures her through.

“I’m not going in there,” she protests.

“You are if you want to live.” 

Footsteps echo somewhere behind them in the main corridor.

“Fine,” she snaps, skittering through. They have to pause so Kylo can rebuild the doorway behind them. He can feel her rush of amazement she feels at what he’s able to do as well as a thready note of fear—she’s not happy about being sealed into the darkness. Too many close calls in the confines of war engines out in Jakku made her wary and his presence does nothing to alleviate that.

The space around them lapses into darkness, save for the flickering glow from the torch. It’s damp and dank, and only going to get worse. The passage, part of the old royal tunnels used for moving around the castle, leads down from here. Under the moat. 

Rey is cautious, huddling into herself as they move. He can see the chill on her arms and curses himself for not thinking she’d be cold in the sleeveless tunic. She’s a creature of the desert as it is, not used to the cooler conditions of the central plains, let alone the clamminess of these tunnels. He should have given her a clean cape, or one of his thicker tunics to put on. They’d have swallowed her up, but at least she’d be warm.

Nevermind. It’s not worth the risk of discovery to turn back, and the sooner they reach their destination, the sooner she can warm up in other ways.

“Why are you doing this?” she asks.

“Doing what?”

“Saving me. Risking yourself.”

It’s a good question. One he hasn’t even asked himself yet, and which he scrambles to answer.

“You have too much potential. It’d be a waste to kill you.”

She shakes her heard. “That’s not it. That can’t be it. I’m just a scavenger—why would you ignore the Emperor just for that? I’ve seen what they’ll do to you if they find out.”

He has no good answer to her questions. Instead, he says nothing.

“Unless—” She frowns, and his heart stops as he wonders what she’s determined “—Are you planning to use me against Snoke? Are you planning to take the throne yourself—to train me up as  _ your _ weapon?”

Ah. That. It sounds like a half-decent plan, except he has no intention of letting her ever go near Snoke again. Not for his own sake, and not for the sake of the throne that should be his anyway.

“That would be telling,” he replies instead, and her face scrunches into a scowl. She probably doesn’t realize how adorable she looks when she does that—

And since when has he started finding things adorable?

The passage slopes downwards until it’s level with the dungeons on the other side of the moat. The moat itself is empty, long drained since the castle no longer needed protection. Still, water drips somewhere, attracting Rey’s attention.

Truthfully, Kylo can navigate these tunnels in total darkness. He has since he was a boy, using them to flitter around the castle, evading his nursemaids and tutors whenever he could. Sometimes he’d made a game of it, endless rounds of hide and seek with his fath—

No. He’d vowed to never think of that again.

When the ground starts sloping upwards again, Rey gasps.

“We’re heading into the Skywalker castle,” she asks. “Aren’t we?”

He’s impressed that she’s figured out their destination. “Yes. It’s empty and secure.”

“I thought—I thought you were taking me to that town, but that’s all the way down in the valley.”

“Coruscant would be the worst place to take you. It’s too heavily patrolled at night and too much of it has been abandoned for you to effectively hide anywhere.”

“Abandoned?”

He doesn’t elaborate. Too many residents had stood against Snoke during his takeover. Those who hadn’t, had fled elsewhere. The once glistening capital of the kingdom, the richest city in the continent—the envy even of Naboo and Chandrilla—was now in its death throes. Being so close to Snoke should have ensured its growth and success, but as with everything, Snoke has choked the life out of it. 

She huffs. “Why don’t you just let me go?”

“It’s too dangerous.  _ You’re  _ too dangerous.”

“I’m not! I can slip into the forest, down to that town—I’ll be back to Jakku as soon as I can be and nobody there will care who I am.”

“I told you, Niima is destroyed.”

“There are other places I can go. I can survive on my own, you know.”

Kylo doesn’t doubt that. What he does doubt is her ability to remain incognito, not without Plutt’s protection for his own personal gain. She has no idea how to cloak her own energy signature and all the Guard would recognize her instantly if they were ever in the same vicinity.

It doesn’t matter. He can’t let her go, not where she may be seen, and where his disobedience—his sly circumvention of his orders—may be discovered. If that happened, her death would only be more painful. Perhaps Snoke would kill him too. Perhaps Snoke would order him to kill himself, and Kylo would have no choice but to do it, finally finding his way out of the life he’s trapped in.

He will take her contempt if it means she gets to live. And if it gives him time.

Time to spend with her. Time to help her see what her power could be and do. Time to shape her and then, maybe, prove to Snoke how wrong he was.

“If you let me go, I will make it.”

“No,  _ Kira _ .”

She bristles. “I didn’t know that was my name, if that’s what you’re getting at. Nobody has ever called me anything but Rey—”

“I’m not interested.” It’s a lie. He is. He wants to know more, but now is not the time to start wondering. “Come on, we don’t have all night.”

“I won’t do what you want. I’ll—”

“Don’t make me gag you again,” he threatens.

She bites off her next words, jaw slamming shut in silent indignation.

They’ve reached the foot of the stairs that lead upwards, and Kylo gestures for Rey to go ahead of him. It is very many stairs from this deep in the bowels of the castle, but he believes Rey is capable of it.

“What are you going to tell them you did to me?” she asks quietly.

“As little as possible. Snoke is very good at detecting lies.”

“But he’ll expect you to confirm you killed me, won’t he?”

“I’ll tell him I obeyed his order. That isn’t a lie. I am disposing of you.”

“Will he not expect to see…” she shivers… “a body?”

“Perhaps. Those are easy to procure.”

That was true enough. He could ask an undertaker for an emaciated brunette and disfigure her corpse enough that nobody would be able to recognize her. And if they asked what had taken him so long to present her body, he could imply he’d been…enjoying her company in his cell before he killed her. Snoke would believe it—he’d seen Kylo’s interest in Rey lay beyond training her, better than Kylo had himself. Let Snoke think he’d slaked that interest and was now done with her, even if the idea of it made Kylo’s belly want to reject every morsel of food in it.

The stairs trouble his still healing lash wounds, even though he can feel the poultice working. It has a slight anesthetic effect but that only dulls the pain rather than numbs it. They climb and they climb, taking swift breaks every once in a while so Rey can bend over and pant. Kylo is glad she is so free with her weakness, so he can hide his own. But she’s also taking the time to absorb her surroundings, and when they pass a branch in the narrow tunnel he figures out she’s memorizing the route they’re taking. 

Much good it will do her.

He hadn’t put too much thought into precisely where he was taking her until now, as they ascend the most narrow set of stairs towards the top of the keep. The plan had been too hasty—somewhere close by to put her, safe from the risk of discovery and safe from the possibility of her escaping. Now he’s having to contemplate the logistics of keeping her here. Beginning with the most pressing question: where will she sleep?

Kylo is familiar with the state of the castle. He visits it often, a sanctuary away from Snoke and his many acolytes, and a flash of panic runs through him at the realization that he is, in effect, giving up that sanctuary to a girl who won’t thank him for it. So little of it is left in a fit state to inhabit anyway, only a handful of places he’d been able to protect against the ransacking.

There’s one remaining chamber with a bed in it. She’ll have to go in there.

She doesn’t notice him stop until she’s already ten steps above him, then freezes and peers down at him. He extinguishes the torch and the passage goes black.

He hears her whimper.

“Why did you do that?” she whispers.

“I can’t risk anybody from the fortress looking towards the keep and seeing the flame,” he replies, not bothering to keep his voice low. He rests his hand against the stone and pushes. Weak moonlight filters through the gap it creates, barely illuminating the room on the other side, and Rey is quick to follow him through the space this time.

The room beyond is draftier than even Snoke’s fortress. The fireplace lies dark and empty as it has for many years, but Kylo can’t light it without creating smoke, which will definitely be noticed by keen eyes down below. There is a separate heating system involving steam and pipes under the floor, but that hasn’t been used in years and he’s no idea how to get that working. But the bed is as he remembers it—carved mahogany draped in heavy blankets and with velveteen curtains hanging from its four posters. The moths have not got into the fabric thanks to lingering charms his mother and grandmother had placed in the room, keeping the dust and insects at bay.

“This is where you’ll be sleeping,” he tells Rey.

“Is that—that’s a bed. A real bed.” She sounds awestruck and despite her innate cautiousness, she creeps across the room to tentatively poke at the velveteen. “It has a feather mattress!” She whirls to look at him, and his belly does a strange twist at the muted delight in her expression. “This is like something royalty would sleep in.”

If only she knew. 

“I believe it was the prince’s bed.”

With wide eyes she takes in the rest of the room: the tapestries lining the walls, the ornate rugs covering the floorboards, the armoires and trunks. The only source of light comes through the windows because the drapes are open, and that will have to be changed before he leaves.

“There are more blankets in the trunks, if you are too cold. I’ll bring you food everyday. You can’t light the fireplaces to heat it, but I’ll fetch meals from the fortress kitchens whenever I can. And I can teach you how to heat it using your power.”

She cocks her head. “I’m not used to hot food anyway.” A cold rejection of his offer of training. Again.

“You’ll need your strength.”

Rey turns her back on him.

“I must leave you now, but I’ll be back after dawn. Take this opportunity to rest—we begin our work in the morning.”

“You think I’ll still be here in the morning?”

“You have nowhere else to go and no way of getting out of this castle.”

She scoffs. “You showed me to how to do that…thing with the stones. I know how to do it.”

“You won’t be able to follow me.”

“I’ll find my way out,” she vows.

“There is no way out without me. The magic sealing the doorways only responds to me.”

It’s an ancient magic, responding to the blood in his veins.

“I can climb,” she tells him, full of pride.

“You’ll be seen. And if you’re seen, you’re dead.”

She shuts her mouth, but he knows that as soon as he leaves, she’ll test the portals anyway.

There’s nothing more for him to do here tonight. He has to be back in the fortress in case anybody comes looking for him. Rey has sufficient food and the castle will provide everything else she needs. 

But a shiver runs through her, barely visible except for how he is so attuned to her presence. He is sure there are blankets as he’s told her—but will time (and moths) have been kind to them?

“Here.” He acts before he can change his mind, undoing the knots that keep his heavy traveling cloak in place. “In case you are cold.” He hands it to her and doesn’t wait to try and discern her expression in the gloom. Instead he crosses to pull the curtains shut over the windows, blocking out the already scant moonlight and draping the pair of them entirely in darkness. 

He hears Rey’s breath catch, and is careful to skirt away from her as he moves back to the portal.

Then he’s pitched back into total darkness with the closure of the wall, sealing him away from Rey and forcing him to descend back towards the fortress. Away from where he wants to be and down towards the place he least wants to be in the world.

* * *

Kylo sleeps. He must do, because the hours between leaving Rey in the castle and dawn pass in a black void in his cot. He doesn’t feel rested, but nor does he remember those hours, so he can’t have been conscious for them.

He wonders how Rey slept. If she even did, or if she’s spent all night trying to break through the portals to escape the keep. He hopes she took the sensible approach, given the complete lack of light for her to work in, and enjoyed the luxury of a  _ real bed _ .

Even if he does not need to think about her sleeping in his childhood bed. Nor about her blanketed in his cloak.

His next steps must be considered carefully. Snoke knows that Kylo has ways into the castle and visits it sometimes, but he doesn’t know the placements of all the portals. He especially doesn’t know about the portal so close to Kylo’s cell. It will allow Kylo to come and go as he pleases to tend to Rey.

But first, he needs to make sure she is properly settled. To do that, he needs to buy himself some time.

He goes to the bath house first, pleased to see he can finally leave his thigh wound free of any covering. The skin has healed over and all the scabbing has fallen away, leaving a shiny scar underneath it. His back is still a mess but healing in a similar way, requiring less bacta because of the comparative shallowness of the wounds.

For appearances he ought to send a bacta concoction to Phasma to help her heal. But he won’t. Instead he takes a pot of it, and puts it in an old satchel, alongside some other items he’s realized he needs to take up to the castle. Rey’s clothes—including her old desert rags—some of his tunics, and the pieces of her staff.

He summons food from the kitchens to be brought to the stables, sending instructions to the grooms for Grimtaash to be prepared for a journey.

Hux is waiting when Kylo arrives in the stable, eyeing the black mount warily. As he should. Kylo considers Grimtaash to be a good judge of character—himself excluded—and if he were to try to take a bite out of Hux’s shoulder or give him a good kick, then it would be more than Hux deserved. 

“Leaving again so soon?” Hux asks in that oily tone, watching as servants carefully pack the food into the saddle’s panniers. 

“I have a mission to fulfill,” he replies with as much disinterest as he can convey. “Mistress Kanata was from Takodana, was she not?”

“Like the scavenger? An interesting connection.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences.”

Hux can go scuttling back to Snoke to report on him, and they can both draw their own conclusions about where Kylo is over the next few days.

“Not taking the Silencer? How unlike you.”

Kylo ignores him, silently observing the stable hands who try to move as fast as they possibly can so his infamous temper doesn’t make an appearance.

“And how is the scavenger?” Hux asks with far too much interest.

“I followed my orders,” he tells Hux coldly, ignoring the urge to snap his neck. Or perhaps chain him to the back of Grimtaash and drag him out of the fortress like that, listening to his wretched screams as Hux is smashed against the floor when the stallion breaks into a canter…

Hux smirks. “I suppose that makes a refreshing change. Phasma is recovering well, you’ll be pleased to hear.”

“Will I?”

“I was of the mind we should have waited until Phasma was strong enough to kill the girl herself, but after those revelations the Emperor wanted her gone immediately.”

Kylo takes a crop from one of the stable hands, enjoying the way Hux’s eyes widen before Kylo attaches it to his belt. Not that he ever needs to use a crop or spurs on Grimtaash, but they do have a certain effect on people who see him on horseback.

“I suppose it’s too late now, though,” Hux prompts, while Kylo adds the food and other items to the panniers.

“If you say so.”

“So the girl is dead then?” Hux asks sharply.

Kylo goes back to ignoring him, tucking the pieces of Rey’s staff into the panniers alongside the food, and swiftly mounting Grimtaash.

“The girl, Ren. Snoke will want to know. I know you took her to your quarters.”

“Do you want to see her corpse—is that it, Hux?” Kylo taunts. “Do you want to see what remains of her now I’ve finished with her? Or better yet—do you want to take your chance with her now as well?”

Hux recoils. “Don’t be revolting.”

“Get out of my way.”

“I need your answer, Kylo.”

“She’s gone. Don’t worry, she won’t be coming for your soft little neck.”

Pushing Hux so far has brightened up his day a little, and now he’s seeded the perfect cover story for himself and won’t need to be seen around the fortress for at least a day and a night. As he steers Grimtaash out of the gates and down the road towards Coruscant, he could almost imagine himself in a good mood.

There’s a first time for everything.

The road is empty. Nobody comes to the fortress without an Imperial sanction and accompaniment of the Guard. Supplies are brought in at cockcrow by transport, and Kylo stretches out his consciousness to make sure he isn’t being tailed. Though he’ll easily lose whoever might try to follow him in the bowels of Coruscant.

The blessing of a journey like this is it allows him time to muse on the events of the last day or so. He’d been truthful in his report to Snoke: if Kanata had been in Lothal, it was only briefly. The sightings of her in Naboo seemed to be legitimate. 

He really doesn’t believe in coincidences. That Kanata and Rey both came from Takodana suggested that Kanata had been in Jakku in a protective capacity for Rey—though why nobody had forged paperwork and given her to a family sympathetic to the Resistance, he didn’t know. Was there nobody the Resistance trusted enough to leave a girl of magical ability in the care of? Did nobody want to take the risk of harboring a girl who would lead to their execution if discovered? The more he’s learned, the more he despises the Resistance. Even if Kanata had been in Niima to watch over Rey, she’d done so from a distance. Why not take the girl in as her own adoptive daughter? Instead, Rey had been left to fend for herself, and the things she’d let slip about her upbringing made it sound like the Resistance had succeeded in her surviving to adulthood through sheer luck.

So. Rey is an Ematt.

Her name isn’t even really Rey, though he can’t imagine ever calling her Kira. It’s not who she is. It’s not even a name she knew about until last night.

Kylo’s heard stories of her family. Loyalists to the Skywalker throne until the bitter end—although, apparently, not quite the end everybody had always thought. He has no memory of seeing them—or Rey, if she'd been born yet—in his family's court. He’d never paid much attention to the people vying for his mother’s approval, or sometimes even his in the hopes it would do them some good. He wonders if they were like that. Maybe not. They’d laid down their lives for Leia even when she was safely ensconced in Naboo.

Their deaths had earned Trudgen a place in Snoke’s Guard. A very good death, indeed. And the day Kylo brought their daughter to court, he killed Trudgen. 

No, he doesn’t believe in coincidences at all.

He’s reached the outskirts of Coruscant. The city is old enough to have walls. It had long outgrown them, but with Snoke’s coup, the inhabitants had retreated within the ancient walls, rebuilding and fortifying them as best they could. It hadn’t done them any good, in the end, but those who remained now stayed within the perimeter of the walls. The urban sprawl outside them had been picked clean for materials when the fortress had been constructed, or destroyed in the process of war. It means that approaching the walls of Coruscant involves riding through the bones of the city, a carcass of tumbled-down buildings and burned-out shells. More like a graveyard than a city.

He feels eyes watching his progress, but nobody of magical ability. These are the desperate and the wily, sifting through the ruins for anything they can sell or exchange for life’s essentials. Scavengers, like Rey. They could be bribed to ask if he’d passed this way—but they’d never let anybody who cared close enough. They’ll disappear into the bowels of the ruins before anybody as graceless as Hux comes close.

The once-mighty walls are a charmless patchwork of rubble and rock, some stones still bearing the pockmarks of cannon fire. The portcullis on the Castle Gate is propped open during daylight hours, allowing Kylo to ride through without a pause. 

The city streets are more lively, with people going about their day, although many of them seem to disappear inside, melting away when they hear Grimtaash’s hooves on the cobblestones. Those who remain go silent, turning away and pretending to go about their business as he passes by. 

Anybody would assume Kylo is passing through Coruscant as the quickest route away from the Fortress. The Castle Gate is the northern entrance, and the Great Imperial Road sprouts from the south-eastern edge of the city, out of the Temple Gate. Instead he’s skirting along the inner northern edge of the walls. He’s taking quiet side streets, the cobbles grimy with horse manure and human waste. 

It had never been like this in youth, when sanitation had been something the Elder Council oversaw for all of the kingdom. Running water and private middens, carts patrolling the streets to hose them down and keep them clean, fines for those who tipped waste into rivers and streams or into the street. Snoke had gotten rid of all that, unbothered by issues he sees as petty even when it leads to outbreaks of virulent diseases. Disease is nothing to Snoke—his magic protects him from it and their deaths feed him. Sanitation, housing, and making sure nobody went hungry were once the priorities of the court and are now ignored. Beggars on the once prosperous, shining streets of Coruscant are a fixture nowadays, and Snoke’s solution is to have them executed when they’re caught. Hux is all too gleeful to implement and oversee that law.

Kylo remembers the days when the boulevards were lined with brightly-painted buildings, a flower-box fixed below every window so the air was constantly perfumed. Every cuisine from across the continent could be found in booths and food stalls, heaped spices displayed by the bucketful next to barrels of wine and oil. Apothecaries jostled up against shops selling silk by the roll, booksellers next to shoemakers, painted porcelain available next to a bakery selling fresh bread and buttery pastries. The silversmiths who’d given the city its epithet as the shining city had clustered near the Foundry Gate in the west, windows full of displays of their prowess. Eighteen different markets had dotted the city, each dedicated to a different specialty: flowers, fish, fruit, and more. Buskers had filled the air with the sounds of lutes, fiddles, flutes, and tambourines.

Now the paint has faded and peeled. The flowers are long gone, their boxes taken for firewood, and nobody devotes their time to growing or selling such frivolities. Most of the shops are shuttered, and the majority of what could once be purchased in the city isn’t imported into the kingdom anymore with the borders sealed as they are. The only smiths are blacksmiths, producing horseshoes and weapons. The buskers have fallen silent. And only three markets remain, every person to be found in them looking as drab, gray, and hungry as the buildings themselves.

It’s the empty expanse of the old produce market that has him thinking of this, the great square devoid of life, the only sign of its use the mounds of rotting garbage piled in the center. In his youth, there was so much he could have shown to Rey, or bought for her. But he doesn’t think she’d be impressed with the remnants of Coruscant even in comparison to Niima.

Some things are constant. Tekka’s Livery, for one, the humble stables which back into the mass of the walls, swelling out of them like they are propping the damn things up. The gates to the yard are bolted shut, but open with a reluctant creak when he dismounts and raps on them.

It’s not Lor San who peers through the gap, but one of his offspring, a scrawny, freckled adolescent who flees to fetch the elder when he catches sight of Kylo’s mask. Or, perhaps, Kylo reassesses when Lor San himself appears to open the gate properly, his offspring’s offspring. The man has certainly gotten old—his once golden beard is now stark white.

“You’ll forgive me for not genuflecting,” says Lor San, surprisingly nonchalant in a way people rarely are around Kylo. “I’ve been led to believe you’ve renounced your previous titles—even if you’ve taken new ones.”

Kylo flinches beneath the mask. Lor San has never shown magical ability—if he had, he wouldn’t be alive—but he does have an uncanny way of seeing the truth in situations. Which is why he’s always happy to insinuate that he knows Kylo’s true identity, even if he never says his birth name out loud.

“You seem very relaxed for someone who has just had an Imperial Guard turn up at their home.”

Lor San shrugs, taking Grimtaash’s reins and easing him through the gate into the stable yard. To Kylo’s annoyance, the stallion puts up no fuss, accepting the old man’s curious pats and strokes with uncharacteristic ease. Still. It will make things easier if Grimtaash is comfortable here.

“I have nothing to hide. Whereas, if you have turned up here, I’m thinking you probably do.”

The gate closes behind them, and Kylo feels considerably more at ease now they are hidden from prying eyes outside.

“Think again. I’m stabling the horse here for a few days and I expect discretion.”

Lor San considers this. “Is this some mission for— _ him _ ?” He jerks his head in the vague direction of the Fortress. 

“I am not doing the Emperor’s bidding. But even if I was, you’d be obliged to do as I say. I’m sure it wouldn’t take much to find evidence of Resistance propaganda somewhere on these premises.”

“No need. I don’t know what you’re up to, but if it’s not going to make him happy…” He holds out a fistful of oats for Grimtaash. “I’ll consider this a favor, for your mother’s sake.”

“Do  _ not _ mention her.”

Even a null like Lor San can feel Kylo’s anger as it washes over him, the old man flinching when it does, but he doesn’t quail either. “Ilco, get the central stall prepped,” he says to the freckled youth, who is lurking as far as away as he can get from Kylo while remaining in the yard.

“I have some supplies with me. Have them transferred into a knapsack. I’ll return periodically over the next few days, and when I do I’ll need food to take with me.”

“So you’ll be staying locally, then?” inquires Lor San, and something about the knowing glint in his eyes suggests that he’s heard of the passageways that riddle the land around here. Impassable for anybody without royal blood, but probably not as secret as they were meant to be.

“That’s neither your concern nor your business, old man.”

When his supplies have been fashioned into something he can carry, balanced on his back, he leaves the stable yard and follows the street further until he reaches the blocked-off wreckage of the Market Gate, hastily filled in when the city came under siege. Down an alleyway that runs parallel to the walls, he slips inside another courtyard, relieved that the shed inside it remains standing, even if the door has rotted off its hinges. Down the stairs inside he goes, and finds the portal in the cellar wall by touch alone. 

It’s an uphill trek back to the castle, taking far longer than using the passage close to his cell, but now he’s confident that nobody knows where he is or will question him when he returns. And this ruse can be repeated as often as needed until Kanata is caught or found dead.

When he steps out of the hidden doorway inside the castle grounds, the endless leaden sky above framing the hulking keep, he feels lighter than he has in a long time. A flicker of anticipation curls through his belly. Rey is up there, waiting for him.

Now he can devote his time to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on [Tumblr](https://cellar-darlings.tumblr.com/) for a teaser of chapter nine on August 1st.


	10. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once again, Rey wakes up in unfamiliar surroundings.
> 
> To be fair, these are very pleasant surroundings to be in, no matter how strange they are. She’s warm and apparently snuggled on top of a cloud, but that means she’s definitely not in her hammock in Niima, or the cot in Snoke’s fortress, or even huddled up in Phasma’s bathtub. Somewhere nearby birds are trilling merrily, and that’s a new experience for her too.
> 
> She cracks an eye open, peering around at the empty room. Chinks of light have found their way through the gaps in the curtains, splashing just enough illumination for her to see where she is.
> 
> A four-poster bed. In a castle. Weeks ago she was a scavenger, sleeping in the remains of a shack. Now she’s—well, she’s still a scavenger, but one with a lot more luxury around her.
> 
> But it’s a bed she was brought to by a masked demon who kidnapped her from Niima and destroyed her entire life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for your comments on the last chapter! No throne room fight which I think is what some people were expecting, and instead we moved into the part of the story that really mirrors the Eros and Psyche myth. This is the longest chapter yet and also contains a few hints of Beauty and the Beast. Let me know if you spot them!

Once again, Rey wakes up in unfamiliar surroundings.

To be fair, these are very pleasant surroundings to be in, no matter how strange they are. She’s warm and apparently snuggled on top of a cloud, but that means she’s definitely not in her hammock in Niima, or the cot in Snoke’s fortress, or even huddled up in Phasma’s bathtub. Somewhere nearby birds are trilling merrily, and that’s a new experience for her too.

She cracks an eye open, peering around at the empty room. Chinks of light have found their way through the gaps in the curtains, splashing just enough illumination for her to see where she is.

A four-poster bed. In a castle. Weeks ago she was a scavenger, sleeping in the remains of a shack. Now she’s—well, she’s still a scavenger, but one with a lot more luxury around her.

But it’s a bed she was brought to by a masked demon who kidnapped her from Niima and destroyed her entire life. As comfortable as she is, she can’t stay put. She definitely can’t stay snuggled under Kylo’s cloak, which she’d wrapped herself up in when she climbed under the blankets last night. It’d been the warmest thing in the room and also didn’t smell musty like everything else. Now her nose is full of the scent of lavender soap and him. It’s like having him present without the sizzling edge of rage.

Her body protests when she sits up, wanting to sink back into the plush mattress and let the birds lull her back to sleep. Her stomach rumbles but half-heartedly, nothing like the pangs of a Jakku morning. The blankets are quite possibly the softest things she’s ever felt, the pillow light and fluffy under her head. If she weren’t a prisoner she’d enjoy the experience a lot more.

When she untangles her legs and swings them over the edge of the mattress, pushing herself to her feet, she discovers the castle does have its flaws. It’s as drafty as Snoke’s fortress, and though the fireplace looks functional enough, Rey takes Kylo’s warning to heart. Smoke billowing out of the chimney of a deserted ruin is definitely one way to attract attention.

She creeps across the chilly floor to the window, finding a sliver between the curtains she can peer through. The glass is grimy but not opaque, and she squints out at the world beyond, eager to see where she is and what lies beyond.

The keep is on high ground—she’d already known that. From this high up, she can’t see the castle courtyards, only the ring of the empty moat. Below that are the woods, which aren’t as extensive as she’d thought when she’d been running through them, ending in barren plains which stretch east and west. The trees frame the fortress below, which is an ugly, squat collection of dark buildings down where the land levels out. The wall that rings it is higher than any structure inside it.

She’s glad to be free of it, all things considered. The castle is definitely more pleasant surroundings to be trapped in. Even this much distance between her and Snoke feels wonderful, like she can finally draw a full breath again and be refreshed by it. 

They must all think she’s dead down there; her death staged for the second time in her life.

_ Kira Reyana Ematt. _

She has no memory of ever being called Kira. Always, always Rey. She doesn’t remember ever using magic, but then her childhood is so blurry and distant—everything before Jakku is shrouded in fog in her mind. Now she’s coming to realize that’s probably deliberate. Before Jakku she’d lived in Takodana and Kijimi, places that feel as distant to her as Naboo. Is that where the warm little house had been—Takodana? Is that where she’d learned to tie her hair back into three buns to keep it out of her face, or had that come later?

Rey shakes her head. It doesn’t matter. She can never go back there, and there’s nothing left for her even if she did. Kijimi got turned to rubble after the war, much like Niima did when Kylo took her away. Takodana rebuilt, or so she’s heard, but there’s nobody left in that little house even if it still stands. And Maz—Maz has made it all the way to Naboo herself, where she’ll be safe.

Does that make it worth it? Is Maz’s life worth Rey’s captivity? 

Maybe.

Beyond the fortress, the land slopes down again, before flattening out into a plain. The town Rey saw the night she arrived at the fortress fills much of the plain, a silvery river snaking its way towards the base of the castle hill, with roads spiking out of the town like spokes in a wheel. They disappear into more woodland, and the horizon is swallowed by a range of hills which rise out of the treeline, their slopes the color of deep bruises.

It’s good to know the lay of the land. It will help her when she escapes. Kylo was right about her scaling down the side of the keep—doable, since the uneven stone provides so many hand and footholds, but so very, very visible. But there have to be other ways out of a place like this, and when she finds them, as long as she sticks to the forest she can follow the roads. They must lead to other towns and cities she can disappear into.

The other thing Kylo had been right about was her not being able to get the magic doorway to open. It had been the first thing she tried when she’d heard it close up behind her last night, the stones grinding against each other as they slid back into place. She’d been so confident when she’d placed her hands against them and could still feel his magic ringing through them, summoning the feel of whatever he’d done down in the fortress to get them to move. But they’d stayed put, stubbornly ignoring the way she’d shoved at them with all her might—both physically and mentally.

Not that a little issue like that had kept her from trying to find another way out. After Kylo left, she’d combed the room with her fingertips, having to rely on her sense of touch since it was so bloody dark. A torch would’ve come in handy, but even if it wouldn’t have been risky to light one, she had nothing to light it with. Fire was outside of Rey’s existing skill set, since its only use in a desert was cooking food, and she’d never had any food worth cooking.

In the end, after stubbing her entire foot against one of the trunks, she’d given up and collapsed into the bed, ready to begin her quest for freedom in the morning.

Now morning’s here and she wastes no time. She tries to find the place Kylo entered through, except—she can’t even see where it is. Unlike the doorway down in the fortress, which had borne the outline of a bricked-up entrance, each section of the wall is indistinguishable from the other. She feels along the stretch opposite the bed, certain this is where they’d come in, but there’s no lingering trace of Kylo’s magic anywhere. She pushes and shoves, hoping the magic will work for her anyway, but it feels exactly like she’s pushing at a solid wall.

In a huff, she turns her attention to the rest of the room. It’s square and has more things in it than Rey has ever seen in her life: lots of elaborately carved rich, dark wooden furniture which matches the polished floorboards, intricate tapestries on the walls, and trunks full of  _ stuff _ . Ridiculous amounts of stuff. Blankets, clothes, candles, and more pillows, all sweetly scented by desiccated herbs. No food—though that would have rotted away long ago—and no weapons. From the ceiling hangs a heavy crystal chandelier, and the fireplace is framed in an impressive selection of painted tiles, each different to the next. If she had a horse—if she knew how to ride a horse—she’d be bundling up stuff to take with her in one of the blankets and trade along the way. She might do that anyway.

Two doors lead out of the room and she tries both. One leads into a room bigger than Rey’s dwelling in Niima, and for a long moment Rey can only gape at all the marble in it. The room has its own window with another view down to the valley which lets a flood of light in. The marble shines very white, veins of gray and cream running through it and almost glinting like gold. A deep porcelain basin is set into the floor, much like the baths down in the fortress, but there’s also a basin on a pedestal and the fanciest water closet she’s ever seen, like a throne made out of ceramic.

Both basins have little spouts aiming into them, and Rey tests them, twisting their handles to see what they do. She’s read about things like this in a book she’d once come across in Niima—a type of engineering involving water and—yes, she can hear the distant clunk of pipes. It takes about a minute, but then water comes sputtering out of the spout, rusty and fitful before flowing even and clear. The water trickles down a hole in the bottom of the basin, disappearing through a pipe built into the pedestal. 

It’s a refresher. Like a bathhouse, but with running water pumped up from wells, more sophisticated than the system in the fortress. According to what she’d read, some of these spouts are even supposed to have water heated by fire so it ran through hot, and hadn’t Kylo said this room belonged to the prince? 

Poor boy. To have all this luxury and then die such a wretched death anyway. The stories are many, each more gruesome than the last, but they all have one thing in common: Kylo Ren was the one who murdered him. After seeing Kylo fight, she believes it, and when she steps back into the prince’s room, she feels a weight of sorrow settle over her for someone to have died at his hands. Yes the prince had probably been a soft, cosseted idiot, but nobody deserved that.

Lovely as it is, the refresher will not help her escape the keep. She tries the other door instead and it’s locked, despite her many attempts to jiggle the handle. The door is too solid to kick the lock away—Rey knows better than to try or risk a broken foot—and there’s nothing heavy enough in the room she can lift to try and smash her way out. Nor does she have any of her old tools that she used to pick locks with.

“If I were a key, where would I be?” she mutters to herself.

There’s not much chance the key is in the room. After all, why would the room have been locked from the inside? But desperation has Rey searching for one anyway, turning to survey the room with a critical eye. She manages to register more pipes leading underneath the floorboards and wonders what they’re for, before giving up and turning back to the door with more determination.

Back in the fortress, she’d unlocked her room using her mind. She can unlock this one too.

Rey rests her hand over the lock, closing her eyes to help herself focus. In her mind’s eye she pictures the locks Plutt had trained her to open, the rusted mechanisms he’d pulled from old wrecks to teach her what they looked like inside and how to get them to open without keys. This one is old and relatively simple when she pries into it with her mind—there’s an internal lever instead of pins and she just needs to shift the lever—

Like that.

The door opens and she barrels through, baring her teeth in triumph. 

Rey spills out into a bright staircase in what appears to be the center of the keep. She peers over the edge to see the stairs spiraling downwards into gloom. Other doors open off on this level, but they’re shut fast and she has no intention of trying them since going down seems likely to be the best way of getting out. The stairs also continue upwards, probably into the narrow tower at the very top of the keep, but a tower is the kind of place to get trapped in, so she definitely doesn’t want to head up there.

Especially because she can feel Kylo’s presence, like an angry prickle at the back of her neck. He’s coming back, like he said he would, and when he comes through the portal into the bedroom and finds it empty she’s sure he’s going to tear the place apart looking for her.

She starts descending the stairs swiftly, thankful that the carpet pinned to them swallows the sound of her footsteps. She raises a cloud of dust as she goes, and that’s not good—it’ll make it easier for Kylo to track her.

The stairwell becomes darker as she descends, the windows on the lower levels shuttered over, even if some of the shutters are cracked and hanging from their hinges at odd angles. It slows her pace, and she can feel Kylo getting closer—though the only thing she can hear is her own labored breathing.

There. A scrape of stone. A pulse of magic. He’ll be on her tail soon enough.

Down she goes, pushing faster, waiting for the heavy drumbeat of his steps behind her. He feels so close it’s like he should be breathing down her neck.

She turns another corner, glancing behind her to make sure he isn’t there, and slams into a brick wall.

Or not.

“Going somewhere?” Kylo asks, his bulk blocking the way down.

She’s up and over his shoulder before she’s had a chance to react, a horrible sense of deja vu settling in when she realizes she’s staring down at the cape he’s wearing, just like the one she’d slept in. She’d thought that an act of kindness last night, but no—he has enough of them to give away.

Worse, she’s imagining the muscles and skin beneath it, pale and toned and dusted with little dark marks.

“Put me down!” she insists, giving his back a hearty thump. He doesn’t flinch or pause in his assent of the stairs, despite the wounds he’d received only a few days earlier.

“Anybody would think you enjoy being carried like this.”

“Kriff off.”

She swears she can feel an edge of amusement roll through him—the faintest crackle of laughter through the mask. He strides back through the bedroom door and tips her onto the bed so hard she bounces.

The door is shut and locked—without the key—before she’s able to scramble up and get past him, but he’s tipping out the contents of a knapsack onto the bed beside her. Food tumbles out—fruit, bread, cheese—and the pieces of her quarterstaff.

“It’s broken,” she fumes, but grabs for the segments anyway. Kylo tuts and floats them into the air, out of her reach, depositing them on top of one of the chests across the room.

There are also clothes—the things she was wearing down in the fortress, some of his black tunics, even her old desert rags.

She turns away from him, staring hard at one of the wall tapestries like she’s studying it. It really is very pretty, with all kinds of little figures woven into it. She thinks it’s depicting some kind of battle, though she’s more concerned with how Kylo got into the castle than the story it’s telling. He didn’t come through this room like they did last night, but from somewhere at the bottom of the stairs. There’s another way out—if she can find it.

“We can start your real training today,” he says.

She huffs. “You can’t just buy my cooperation with food, you know.” She gestures at the ridiculous amount of it on the bed. 

“Can’t I?”

“No. I’ve had enough of your kind of training.”

“That wasn’t my training, that was Snoke’s. Mine will be rigorous, but it will only hurt if you make mistakes.”

“Oh yes, that sounds really enticing.” She shakes her head. “I won’t help you bring him down. Even if I don’t want Snoke on the throne, I’ve got no reason to believe you’d be any better.”

Rey thinks she hears him mutter something. It sounds like he grunts the word _ fair _ , but it’s probably just the modulations of whatever magic distorts his voice, because he sounds as haughty as ever when he replies.

“I’m not offering to train you in exchange for anything. I will train you because I recognize your power, and I believe I found you for a reason. To bring that power to its fruition.”

She pushes herself off the bed, facing him with her arms folded. “I  _ will _ find my way out of here—you’ll see.”

“You may try. The keep is yours to explore, but you’ll not find a way out of it.” His voice switches from arrogance to gentle coaxing. “Of course—perhaps with real training you’ll be able to use magic to aid you?”

Rey knows he doesn’t believe it’s possible. She knows it’s a ruse, a completely obvious, transparent ploy to get her to agree to him teaching her. 

But  _ kriff _ if she’s not desperate enough to agree to it.

“Fine.” It’s not as if he’s going to leave her alone to find her own way out unless she does, is it? 

Kylo holds his hand out to her across the bed. “Do we have a deal?”

She screws her nose up at him and grabs a tiny savory tart from the pile of food, skirting around the edge of the bed towards him. “No chance.” His hand drops abruptly back to his side. “But I’ll sign up for your wizard school until I find my way out of here.”

“Very well.” His hand flexes, almost imperceptibly. “First, then, a tour of your new home?”

She shoves the pastry into her mouth in one, making a rude motion behind his back, and follows him.

* * *

He doesn’t take her into any of the other rooms on this level. Instead she has to follow him down into the gloom, until they’re on the bottom floor of the keep. The stairs open into what was once a grand entrance hall, but the reason it’s so dark down here is that there are no windows. There is an enormous doorway which should lead outside, twice Rey’s height and the same width again, but the doors themselves are splintered and rotting on the floor. The doorway itself has been blocked-up, the stonework messier than what surrounds it.

So there’s no escape that way. Not that Rey ever expected to go out through the front door, but she can see why Kylo was so confident about her not using it.

He gestures through a door on their left. “The banqueting hall.” Rey glimpses the remains of long tables and benches, upturned and smashed to pieces. “And the throne room—” He points to his right but doesn’t look inside himself. 

That room is suspiciously empty, thick with dust and cobwebs. The windows for both rooms are set high from the ground, up near the lofty ceilings, but have been crudely bricked-up in the same way as the doors to the outside. A rainbow of glass is scattered across the ground, some pieces larger than others. 

Kylo is watching her peering into the murk. “It was all looted before it was secured,” he says gruffly, “if you’re hoping to find treasure.”

“I’m just curious,” she snarls at him.

He turns and strides away, leading Rey back past the foot of the staircase and to another set of heavy doors. These hang off their hinges at crooked angles, but he is easily able to shove one aside and let daylight flood into the space. 

Rey darts past him, wriggling through the gap and outside.

She’s never been more delighted to breathe in fresh air, even if she immediately realizes she’s stepped foot into a courtyard and is still hemmed in by the rest of the castle. Rather than the keep being the square building she assumed, it actually encloses the paved yard, with more doors leading into the other wings. 

“This is the inner courtyard,” Kylo tells her, suggesting that there’s an outer courtyard somewhere—and Rey probably isn’t going to see it. “We can train out here.” There’s a strange tension in him as he speaks, something new. It’s like he’s trying to cross the space as fast as he can, naming things without looking at them, his attention fixed on the other side of the yard. 

The courtyard itself shows signs of life, weeds pushing up between the flagstones and trees having taken root where they can. There’s a section of the yard which is enclosed by a knee-high wooden fence, now rotting, and within the fence there’s more green than Rey has ever seen in her life. So many plants, bedded down in soil, all competing for space, pushing out through the wood to try and find somewhere new to grow.

Kylo gestures to it as they pass by. “That was the kitchen garden, and these were the kitchens.” He motions towards another vacant doorway. “The servants slept in the rooms above the kitchens. All the stores are empty, of course.” That seems to take up the wing to their left. To their right— “The guard’s quarters, armory, and workshops.”

“Workshops?”

He shrugs, still stiffly aloof. “The smithy, the joinery. The castle had its own silversmith as well as blacksmiths. Stonemasons, carpenters, coopers.”

“You seem to know a lot about what the castle was like.” If she didn’t know better, she’d swear he tensed further at her words. “Of course, you did help destroy it.”

He makes a noncommittal noise and strides off across the courtyard, his heavy boots thumping on the stone. Rey can’t get a handle on his mood. He feels so distant compared to normal, like he’s uncomfortable in this space. She thinks he probably expects her to follow him, but instead she sidles across to the doors he indicated led to the workshops.

They’re a mess inside, but not empty. They might have been ransacked but plenty has been left behind—the smith’s anvil and forge overturned and tools scattered across the floor.

“You’ll find no weapons in there,” he says over her shoulder.

She yelps and spins to find him standing directly behind her, apparently able to creep up silently when he feels the need.

“Shame,” she bites back, his mood affecting hers.

Weapons would have been nice. But tools—tools she understands. Tools have all kinds of uses. She’s already cataloging what she’s seen in her head, figuring out what will be generally useful and what may come in handy in the process of escaping.

He waits for her to walk ahead of him this time, so she does, tromping to the opposite side of the keep. When she glances up through the branches of one of the trees they pass under, she sees small, green globes dangling from the branches.

“Apples?”

“These are all fruit trees.” He’s right. When Rey peers around she can see tiny red cherries blossoming on another tree, and dark clusters of berries on another. “There used to be orchards on the plains, but they were cut down during the war.”

Rey can feel saliva pooling in her mouth at the thought of an apple, even those that seem too small to be ripe and ready to eat yet.

The doors into the final wing are more secure than the others, still on their hinges and closing properly. Rather than being central, they’re tucked into the corner of the building. When they step inside, Rey finds herself at the foot of another staircase, but there’s no door out to the other side. Instead, a gaping hole leads into another large hall, running the full length of the wing, which Kylo tells her was the mess for the guards and servants. There’s no evidence of stained glass this time, the shattered remains of the window panes thick but transparent. “We can train in here when the weather is bad.”

Upstairs is brighter again, and there appears to only be one level above the mess hall, unlike the several floors of the main keep. Kylo leads her to a set of double doors which are remarkably secure and cared for. He produces a key to unlock them, and that’s when Rey realizes this is a space he spends plenty of time in.

“This is where I’ll teach you,” he says, opening the door to sweep her inside.

She gasps when she steps into the room. It runs the full length of the wing, and along each outside wall, elaborate windows are set up high to catch the sun. Light spills in through the stained glass and paints rainbows across the floor. 

Below them, the walls are lined with bookshelves, and the room is carved into aisles by more shelves. At the very back she can see an enormous bureau, built from a deep, rich wood and elaborately carved. The air is perfumed sweet and musty, something Rey’s never smelled before but which she likes instantly.

“It’s a library!” she says, inadvertently delighted.

“Not just any library,” Kylo tells her. She can feel him watching, taking in her reaction. “The royal library. The greatest collection of writings about magic in the world.”

She creeps in further. There is a sense of—something in the air. A thick layer of what she’s coming to understand is magic, a presence of its own, but also traces of other people. Many other people, like she’s come to sense Kylo and Phasma and Snoke, but these presences are altogether more pleasant. Soft and warm, like gentle whispers and echoes of caresses.

“Snoke just…left it here?”

“The library has its own set of protections that means its contents are best left where they are. I am its custodian.”

She turns back to face him. “You?”

He definitely stiffens. “Yes,” he replies softly. Dangerously.

It’s an interesting detail. Perhaps a crucial detail. He’s already told her that the portals only respond to him, and he’s clearly the only person who ever comes into the castle, or he wouldn’t be hiding her away here. Now it appears the library is his to command too. This entire place is Kylo’s domain, rather than Snoke’s. Does Snoke understand the extent of it, or are there other things Kylo hides away, keeping secret from his master for his own benefit, just like he’s hiding Rey?

Aware he’s still waiting for her to respond, she shoves all that aside. “You don’t strike me as much of a scholar.”

He huffs. “That’s rich.”

She folds her arms. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, I hope I don’t have to teach you to read before we begin our training.”

“I can read!” she spits at him, turning her back and stomping down one of the aisles. Despite his ever-annoying presence—one she can’t ignore or get comfortable in—she likes this room already. It feels less desolate than the rest of the castle, even cozy, and she has to admit that she feels excited to be surrounded by all these texts. Books were a luxury in Jakku, and she can’t remember the last time she’d found one. Reading isn’t something she’d done extensively since she was a child—not since…

Well. Not since she was a child.

Kylo brings the entirety of his bulk in through the door, closing it behind him.

“I’m glad to hear it,” he tells her, and she swears he seems amused at her annoyance. “It will make teaching you so much easier.”

“That’s why we’re here?”

“Yes. I will teach you to fight properly elsewhere, but in here—here, you will learn magic.”

* * *

Learning magic is, to Rey’s consternation, a relatively boring affair. Kylo picks out a few books, stacks them up on the bureau, and fetches her some parchment, quills, and ink. 

“You have a good instinctual use of your powers, but you need to understand what it is you’re doing. These books contain the basic fundamentals.”

She frowns at the stack. “So you want me to read?”

“And take notes.”

“Can’t you just tell me what I need to know?”

“This is how I learned.”

He seems serious, wandering away into the stacks to let her concentrate. She cracks open the book on top of the pile, sneezing at the face full of dust that’s dislodged when she does so. 

_ The Magickal Principium _ reads the title page, in ornate lettering.

At least the book has pretty illustrations inside it, gold and vibrant, even if the proportions on the drawings of people are all a bit wrong. She finds herself flicking through just to look at the pictures, her eyes swimming at the masses of black text on every page.

Kylo is stealthy, moving through the room without making a sound, but it’s impossible to forget he’s there even when he disappears outside of her eyeline. He exists, crackling and ferocious, and more than once she finds herself glancing up from the first paragraph to squint through the stacks and find him.

_ The fyrst gyding princyple of magick is that matter cannot be created nor distroyed, merely manypulated for our own ends. In order to do thus sucksessfully, we must understand what we are doing when we employ such un nattural perposes. _

“You haven’t made any notes.” 

Rey jerks at Kylo’s sudden appearance, almost knocking over the pot of ink.

“I can’t concentrate with you hovering around like an overgrown bat,” she scowls. 

“If you don’t learn to concentrate, you’ll never master your powers.”

“I’m sure I’d be fine if you weren’t here,” she mutters. “Though this would make fine bedtime reading. Put me right to sleep.”

“You cannot take any of these books out of the room,” he says, missing her point. “And after darkness, you will have no light to see by.”

“You mean—”

“No torches. Anywhere in the castle—you can’t risk the light being seen.”

“So I’m just supposed to sit in darkness after sunset?”

“You sleep. I’ll ensure you’re tired enough.”

“Great.” She’d rather spend her time here than in the bedchamber—it’s more pleasant in here, until she observes one thing missing which would make it unbearable at night. “Wait—there’s no fireplace. Doesn’t it get freezing?”

“A fire would be unsafe around this many books,” Kylo explains. “The room used to be heated through a different method—there are pipes underneath the floor which can transmit heat throughout the castle.”

So that’s what the ones she’d seen this morning did. “But they don’t work anymore?”

“No.”

Fantastic. She’s going to freeze to death at night.

When she makes no attempt to turn her attention back to the book, Kylo speaks again.

“Are you really not going to make any attempt to read that book?”

“I already told you, I can’t concentrate.”

“Very well. Come with me.”

* * *

Rey’s not impressed with leaving the shelter of the library, especially when Kylo locks it up and hides the key somewhere within his robes.

“Why did you do that?” she asks as she trails him down the stairs.

“Do what?”

“Lock the door. Am I not allowed to go in there without you?”

She liked the feel of the library more than anywhere else in this skeleton of a ruin. It was almost cozy; familiar. And she can’t lie, despite all her protests, she wants to know more about how to use her powers now she’s discovered them. Not with him—she doesn’t trust what he intends to teach her. He’ll probably only want to teach her the dark stuff, things she doesn’t want to do. But if she can teach herself… 

He pauses and she almost goes barreling into his back. “Can you be trusted?”

“Oh,  _ you’re _ asking  _ me _ if I’m trustworthy? You’ve murdered people but I don’t get to go into your stupid fancy library—”

Kylo turns abruptly, and despite him being two steps below her, he still manages to tower over her head. “Yes. I am a murderer,” he bites out, then sweeps away. She gapes after him before taking the stairs two at a time to try and catch up.

“So that’s a no, then?” she asks, despite all the evidence that poking this particular beast seems like a very stupid past-time. 

“Why ask me? I’m just a killer.”

Rey would think he sounded hurt, but even if the distortion the mask places on his voice didn’t wipe away all traces of emotion, she knows better than to think he cares about her opinion.

“What’s  _ that _ supposed to mean?”

Kylo comes to a halt again at the foot of the stairs. His silhouette bleeds into the shadows around him. “It means, I have saved your life against my orders  _ twice _ since I’ve known you. I am offering to teach you all I know in order for you to protect yourself. I have fed you, I have brought you things to comfort you, and all I seem to get for the effort is a constant stream of hostility. I don’t expect you to like me but would it be so terrible for you to show me some respect?”

Oh. Apparently he does have  _ some _ emotions.

Unfortunately for Rey, her sympathetic urges are overridden by her own temper, and she’s responding to his anger with her own before she can rein it in. 

“Respect is earned,” she spits. “Respect is for good people who don’t have the blood of hundreds or thousands of people on their hands! Respect is for people who weren’t involved in the death of my family—”

She’s suddenly blinking back the hot sting of tears, her throat tight and sharp.

“I can assure you,” he tells her stiffly, “that I had nothing to do with their deaths. I wasn’t there, and despite all the stories, I am responsible for far fewer deaths than Snoke would have you believe.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Isn’t it?”

The silence stretches on between them, and Rey wonders if he’s waiting for an apology. She has no intention of providing one, even if she does feel guilty for offending him. She’s ready to run away, to flee back to the bedroom in the keep, when he speaks again.

“It will be easier on both of us if we can be cordial.”

He’s right, she knows he is—he’s the only person she’s going to have any contact with for the foreseeable future. But that’s his doing so she still can’t help needling him.

“And if I can’t be? What then—will you do what Snoke wanted you to do all along?” She lifts her chin. “Will you kill me?”

He stiffens, becoming so still she thinks he’s stopped breathing.

“No,” he tells her. “I will not kill you. I will not harm you.”

He sounds so oddly solemn as he makes these promises that all the anger dissipates out of her.

“Good.” She swallows. “I’ll try to be less rude.” She glances back up the staircase, towards the room that started the disagreement in the first place. “You can’t be here all the time. What else am I supposed to do when you’re not around?”

He gives a soft grunt as if she’s made her point. “You can enter the library on your own—if you can get into it without a key. Consider that your first test.”

She frowns as he wrenches the courtyard door open and strides through. “Doesn’t that mean any magic user can get in there without a key? What’s the point of that?”

“Only those who seek knowledge and don’t intend to cause harm to the library may enter,” he tells her. “It keeps plenty of people out.”

“That, and apparently nobody being able to get in or out of the castle except you.”

“Yes, that helps too. But it wasn’t always this way. The library’s protections date back many centuries.”

“So where are we going now?”

He leads her out into the courtyard, and Rey finds herself tipping her head up towards the light of the sun. It seems brighter out here than it ever did when she was in Snoke’s fortress, even when they’d gone outside. Not that they’d done that much, and the lack of windows had started to weigh on her. Now, she’ll have plenty of access to daylight and fresh air, even if the nights are going to be so very dark. And cold. She’s not looking forward to that part.

“Here,” Kylo says. “You must have fought well against Phasma to defeat her even when she was armed.”

Rey shrugs, trying to act contrite. “I did what I had to.”

“And with my dagger, no less.” 

Rey can’t tell if he’s happy or annoyed about that part. He hadn’t even noticed the dagger was gone; how was that her fault?

“You unmasked her.”

“I did.”

She’d forgotten about that part. About how Phasma had writhed and screamed when her face was exposed, then quieted when the helmet was shoved back in place.

“Don’t ever try to do that with me. I can’t promise not to kill you if you do.”

Rey shivers. He’s serious, she can tell, and he sounds almost—regretful about it. Like he wouldn’t enjoy doing it, but he’d do it anyway.

What was so kriffing important about the masks Snoke had them all wearing?

“Fine, I’ll leave it on and protect my eyes from ever having to see your ugly mug.”

There’s a moment’s pause before he responds. “As you should.”

He holds his hand up, like he’s listening for something. She holds her breath, peering around to see what he’s waiting for.

It takes a minute. In the silence, she opens up her mind, curious, and feels a thread of magic running from him. He’s pulling something towards him, and as soon as she’s figured that out she sees it sailing through the training room door, spinning in the air towards his outstretched hand. Three pieces of metal, each the length of her arm.

Her staff.

Well. If he wants to show off. Rey closes her eyes and concentrates on the feel of his magic, the strange metallic tug of the staff. Focusing on one of the sections, she curls her own magic around it and gives it a tug, yanking it off its trajectory towards him and into her own waiting palm.

He catches the other two segments easily and dips a nod at her beaming face. “Well done.”

“Oh.” She frowns. “You wanted me to do that, didn’t you?”

“I expected you to take all three pieces.”

_ Kriff. _ She can feel her face contorting into a scowl, and a flicker of his ever-annoying amusement. If only she could see his expressions as easily as he can see hers—

Maybe there’s something to the mask after all. Not that she wants one. Ever. But being all mysterious and inscrutable certainly has its advantages.

He holds the ends of his two pieces together and there’s a whiff of hot metal in the air, solder and iron, before he holds them up to her scrutiny. She steps closer to inspect the single piece he’s now gripping—he’s mended the joins with a hell of a lot less effort than she had to put into making the staff in the first place. It’s both an annoyance and exciting.

She presses the segment she still holds to one raw edge and closes her eyes, trying to feel for the seam with her own mind. Can she—? There’s a flare of that hot solder impression once more, but when she opens her eyes the staff remains in two pieces.

Kylo says nothing, waiting for her to finish embarrassing herself. She doesn’t look up at his mask, trying to convince herself that the flush on her cheeks is exertion from magic, and she lets her mind linger as he repeats the process of merging the pieces together. 

It’s over before she can grasp it, and he holds out the finished staff towards her.

“Now. Try to best me.”

* * *

Later, Rey is sprawled on her belly on the floor, tongue sticking out as she uses a screwdriver to adjust the tension on a bolt.

Kylo’s disappeared. They’d fought—or rather, she’d tried to knock his stupid head off of his shoulders—until she could barely lift the staff anymore, as the afternoon began to draw long. Then he’d dismissed her, saying he was going to fetch hot food from somewhere, but he’d be gone for some time. 

Fine by her. She knows he wants her to try to get into the library while he’s gone, but knowing that makes the mission less tempting. Yes, she wants to get in there and have access to all those books on her own, but it’s still on his terms, so…she refuses to. At least for now.

Instead, she decided to explore more of the buildings lining the courtyard, starting with the workshops. He’d been right when he said there were no weapons left. When they’d finished sparring, he’d split her staff back into pieces to take with him. But when she ventured into the silence and cobwebs of the old smithy, she’d been pleased with the quality of the tools she found.

The workshops have an atmosphere to them, more forlorn than the library. Instead of the peace she’d felt there, and the lingering presence of all the souls who’d passed happy hours among the stacks, the smithy is desolate. Like Rey can hear the echo of a thousand hammers working at the anvil over the centuries, suddenly silenced forever, the work done in here coming to an abrupt ending. She gathers what she wants and takes it with her, uneager to linger somewhere that makes her spirit ache like this.

Which is why she’s currently fiddling with the pipes she saw disappearing under the floor of the bedchamber. Underfloor heating, Kylo had told her. If she’s going to be cooped up in this place then she’s going to make it as comfortable as possible—there’s no guarantee she’ll find an escape route quickly.

The pipes are easy to follow because they’d been retrofitted into the castle at some point, and are inelegantly boxed in where they line the walls. She follows them down to the kitchens, where one of the rooms has been split to house an enormous furnace. Her fingers itch to start stripping it down—so much metal, so many weeks worth of food—but she instead sets to giving it a thorough examination.

It’s in surprisingly good condition. A bit rusty in places, but nothing’s actually broken. It draws in water through wells below the castle and then heats it using fire, before various valves and pumps circulate the water around the castle. It’s actually rather simple. Elegant. It doesn’t take much to get it working again.

She feels Kylo returning long before he arrives, and keeps tinkering even as he stomps around the place looking for her.

“What are you doing?”

She yelps, dropping the wrench from where it had been clenched between her teeth. Somehow, even sensing him closing in, he’d managed to sneak up on her again.

“Fixing this so I can have hot water.”

“You can’t.”

“I can. I did!”

“It produces smoke from the fire.”

She grins at him, twisting one of the valves. “It did. But I rerouted one of the outlets and now it produces steam, which will have dissipated long before it’s visible from the fortress.”

He stares at her in silence and Rey can’t tell if he’s impressed or not.

“I expected you to be in the library,” he says instead.

Or not.

“I know you did,” she tells him sweetly, standing up and dusting herself off. “Is that where the food is? I’m starving.”

It’s not. He’s taken the food to the bedchamber and it’s already cooling down when she gets there. She falls on it with abandon, shoveling down meat pies and a canteen of stew while he waits, watching her as if the way she licks the canteen clean actually interests him.

“So what else is in this wing?” she asks, since it was the one they’d explored the least.

“Just bedchambers.”

“Who for? Surely this entire space wasn’t just for three people.”

Kylo grunts. “Three people and their closest servants.”

“Are the rooms empty now?”

He nods stiffly. “You probably shouldn’t go in them.”

Well, now she’s going to, isn’t she?

When she’s done eating, the floorboards are starting to warm up below her feet, and for the first time since Rey left Jakku she feels the ever-present chill start to abate. She traipses into the refresher, trying both spouts until hot water pipes out of one of them into the basin. Excellent. It means she’ll be able to have a wash later and get the grime of the day—fighting Kylo and working on the furnace—off of her skin. He’s brought soap for her too, and another change of clothes. 

The sun is climbing down through the sky and he remains in the chamber, perched against one of the chests like he doesn’t know what to do next.

“What now?” she asks him pointedly. She’s eager for him to leave so she can bathe, before she’s doing so in complete darkness.

That seems to jolt him. “I must leave for the night. I’ll be back in the morning. Remember—no fire, no light. Not if you don’t want to be discovered.”

“I know, I’m not an idiot,” she mutters.

He pauses on the threshold. “Do you still need the cloak I left? Now that you have heat.”

It’s still tangled up among the blankets, forgotten all day. Truthfully, she doesn’t. She’ll be warm enough without it. But she is facing a night alone in the castle and there’s something comforting about the idea of the cloak, like he’s not completely abandoning her. 

“I might. I can’t predict if my prison is going to break my hard work and leave me freezing, can I?” 

There’s obviously enough contempt in her voice that Kylo’s only response is a quick, sharp nod and a retreat, without any attempt to take the cloak with him.

Rey waits for him to leave, his heavy boots percussive on the stairs but fading out of earshot. He’s still an anxious itch at the edge of her mind, but even that fades, and when he’s truly gone, it feels peaceful once more.

She closes the door and locks it the same way she’d opened it this morning, even though she knows it probably won’t keep Kylo out if he returns. Then she heads into the refresher to wash the day from her skin.

* * *

Later, she huddles in the bed. Clean and warm, wrapped up in one of the big black tunics Kylo brought with him as well as the cloak, but shivering nonetheless. The room is dark—pitch black, with the curtains drawn, and she can’t even see her hand in front of her face. Unlike the night before when the comfort of the bed had lulled her to sleep, now she lies awake, staring upwards at where she thinks the ceiling is.

She’s a prisoner.

One being held in great comfort. Objectively, her circumstances are better now than they were in Jakku, or even in the fortress. She’s got access to more food than she ever had in her life, and instead of spending her days toiling under the blistering sun, she will be learning how to do the kinds of things she’s only read about in the stories of the great heroes. 

But she’s still a prisoner. She’s found no way out of the castle yet, and even when she does, she’ll be on the run from the Emperor, a man she thinks would as soon suck the marrow out of her spine as entertain her living. And Kylo will pursue her—she knows he will. Relentlessly. He’ll take all that anger inside of him and use it to fuel his quest, infuriated by her defiance and her refusal to become what he needs her to be.

The man who holds the keys to her freedom sliced the head off of his comrade’s shoulders without flinching. He’s taken so many lives that none of them mean anything. She’s finally come to understand how little regard any of the people in Snoke’s court have for life. They’ll cut each other down without a second thought if it helps them move one step closer to power. Kylo seems the sole exception, and even saving Rey’s life is a means to an end for him, a way of creating his own weapon.

That’s what Kylo wants to turn her into. He doesn’t care about her—nobody does, beyond what she can do for them. Her value lies in her ability and willingness to dish out pain and shed blood. And she’d almost been driven to it yesterday, trading in Phasma’s life for her own. She never wants to be in that position again. She will fight to protect herself. She would fight to protect people she cared about, if she actually had anybody like that—but she doesn’t. She is alone, caught in the jaws of a trap that feels even deadlier than she first thought. 

When she does sleep, it’s fitful and restless. When she dreams, she is hunted by monsters in masks, blood dripping from her own hands which have curled into claws, ready to slash anybody who comes close to her. The talons sink into the pale flesh of Phasma’s throat, ripping the flesh away until blood pours everywhere.

Then she’s on a battlefield, wrapped in fog but with a pair of cleavers in her hands, chopping away at the prone body of a woman. Rey can’t see her face—it’s a blur, even in dreams—but her hair is the same shade as Rey’s, spilling out around her on the grass.

Rey wakes up screaming.

In the utter darkness, she allows herself to succumb to her tears, like she hasn’t in years. Not since her first year in Jakku. Nobody is here to hear her, to think her weak, to take her things because she’s shown an inch of frailty. None of that matters right now.

But if her eyes are useless, her hearing isn’t. There’s a shift—the quietest sigh, the faintest creak of floorboards—outside the chamber door, and now she’s realized it, she can feel another presence in the darkness, soft and yielding.

She shoves herself up in bed, fist curling around the wrench under her pillow. And she demands of the night—

“Who’s there?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on [Tumblr](https://cellar-darlings.tumblr.com/) for a teaser of chapter ten on August 15th!


	11. Chapter Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo freezes outside Rey’s chamber, holding his breath.
> 
> She’s heard him.
> 
> He was an idiot to ever come down here, but he’d not been able to stop himself when she cried out. The sound had echoed all the way up to the tower room he’d bedded down in for the night, luring him down to his current predicament outside her door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your lovely comments!
> 
> This was the hardest chapter to write, trying to get the balance of these conversations right and keep them believable. I hope I succeeded! I think this might also be the longest chapter so far...

Kylo freezes outside Rey’s chamber, holding his breath.

She’s heard him.

He was an idiot to ever come down here, but he’d not been able to stop himself when she cried out. The sound had echoed all the way up to the tower room he’d bedded down in for the night, luring him down to his current predicament outside her door.

His parents’ bedchamber in the tower hadn’t been his first choice of where to spend the night, but it was his best option—removed enough from Rey’s quarters that she was unlikely to sense him or hear him, or be disturbed by him in any way and come looking for him.

Even with that reassurance, he hadn’t had much luck getting to sleep. He’s never spent a night in the castle since Snoke’s coup, and his childhood home now feels alien to him. Empty and too still. There should be ghosts tiptoeing through the place and yet there’s nothing at all, only Rey.

Lying awake is how he hears her scream. 

That has him on his feet immediately. He forgoes his sword, grabs a dagger, and is out of the door padding down the stairs barefoot before he realizes his face is uncovered. Yet no pain comes—maybe because it’s such a moonless, starless night that he can’t see an inch in front of his nose, and therefore neither can Rey. He’s only able to make his way through the murky keep because of muscle memory. Sneaking around as a young boy is paying off now, the staircase as familiar beneath his feet as the dagger in his hand.

He reaches her door to discover it’s still closed. She hasn’t screamed again, and when he listens carefully, he can hear her weeping through the door.

He should go. She’s not in danger, and he can’t risk discovery. 

But she sobs again, a loud, piercing sound in the darkness, and he feels it. A wave of anguish that starts somewhere in her chest and pulses outwards, washing over him when it reaches him skulking out in the hallway.

It’s his fault she’s here; he can’t leave her like this. Surely there are ways of easing her into dreamless sleep without her realizing?

Yet he’s a loss. His instinct is to hold her and offer comfort. He’s not sure where it comes from—he’s not done that since he was a young boy with his mother, who would quickly shrug him off if she was upset about something. The urge is irrelevant anyway, because he can’t do it. Rey wouldn’t accept it, and she shouldn’t know he’s here.

Except she does.

“Who’s there?” she calls out.

He waits, not even daring to blink in case she can somehow hear the flutter of his eyelashes. He’s been an idiot, driven on by adrenaline and the instinctual need to respond to her. Why doesn’t he ever think things through?

“I know you’re out there,” Rey says, voice still thick with tears. “I can feel you.”

He keeps his mouth shut, taking a step to escape back up to the tower room, but the floorboards creak and give him away. He can hear her moving, the bedsheets rustling and then her feet approaching the door. Her bright aura comes close enough that it feels like sunlight spilling across him. If she manages to open the door, if she sees his face—

Now the pain starts. He grunts as it shudders through him, clenching his fists at his sides to try and control himself.

“Stay away,” he manages to groan. “Please.”

Miraculously, she does. The fire in his head eases and he lets out a shuddering gasp, though he clamps his hand down on the door handle anyway to prevent her from opening it.

“Who are you?” she demands.

She doesn’t know? After all the time they’ve spent together, she can’t tell it’s him? He’s not sure how he feels about that. He knows his voice sounds different without the mask, but she must be able to feel his energy? 

Yet there’s a thready edge of panic to her presence, a genuine note of fear that’s probably the remnant of her nightmare. A rush of adrenaline stoked by his proximity. 

...She really doesn’t recognise him.

He still aches to soothe her as much as he did when he first came running at her screams, but reminding her of Kylo—her captor—won’t help. Instead, he deflects away from the question.

“I’m not going to harm you,” he tells her, so gently he wonders if she will even hear it.

“Then why are you here?” She’s wary, but the tremor in her question belies her alarm.

“I heard you crying out.”

There’s a flare of emotion from her in response, sharper than the fear. He’s not sure what it is until she speaks.

“I’m awake now,” she says. Insistent and irritated in a way that suggests she’s covering up shame. A broken bird puffing itself up to scare away a predator. “I’m fine.”

He doesn’t think she is, but he knows Rey well enough by now that pushing her and reminding her of vulnerability will only draw her ire. “Then I’ll go.”

“Wait!”

He feels the door handle begin to turn beneath his fingers. He manages to seize it and hold it fast even as he’s driven to his knees by a wave of burning.

“ _ Don’t, _ ” he pleads, ragged and raw. “You can’t see me.”

She stops. “Why not?”

He’s already shoving himself to his feet. “I have to go.” He staggers back towards the staircase, and only the absence of a fresh wave of pain confirms she isn’t trying to follow him.

Rey cries out instead. “No! Please— _ come back _ .”

Kylo ignores her, only feeling safe when he’s back in the tower with the door firmly sealed behind him. He summons an invisible portal to secure it—as good as a solid wall if she tries to pass through it.

She’s still calling out for him, a faint sound with this much distance between them, and he paces until he finally grabs the mask and hurls it against the wall. 

It makes an emphatic thud when it collides with the stone, but when it drops to the ground it’s perfectly whole. Undented and unbroken, its blank surface staring back at him—the only face he can ever show the world.

* * *

Kylo’s thankful for the mask the next morning. Nobody needs to see how sallow his skin is, how deep the circles beneath his eyes are. Least of all himself in the cracked mirror hanging in his mother’s old refresher.

Unfortunately, there’s no such respite for Rey. Even if he hadn't already known for himself how badly she'd slept, her appearance would make it clear to him; her eyes are red-rimmed and swollen, her skin ashen. He almost asks her about her night—wanting to know if she remembers speaking to him, or if she’d thought it part of her nightmares. But asking her if she’d slept well seems incongruous with what she expects from him, so he lets the matter lie.

Neither of them have the energy for training, and rain clouds keep passing over the castle and emptying their contents into the courtyard. Instead it’s simpler to retreat into the library and spend the day in there, letting her pretend to read the textbooks he piles on the bureau while he hides himself behind an anthology of stories that had been his favorite when he was a boy.

She never says a word to him except in direct response to a question of his—usually about food.

That night, he cannot get comfortable in the bed roll he’s attempting to sleep in on the bedchamber floor, in the absence of a real bed. It’s no less adequate than his usual cot, and has the added blessing of Snoke’s presence being even further away from usual, but that doesn’t seem to help at all, even when he screws his eyes shut against the looming memories the room presents.

This time when Rey screams in her sleep, he stays in the bed roll and suffers it. He doesn’t know why it’s started now, when she’s further away from Snoke’s insidious presence. She’s always slept soundly in the fortress, so why here? There’s nothing he can do to soothe her, so he tries to cover his ears and ignore her cries.

The following day is even worse. She has very little appetite, a most un-Rey-like situation, and when she pitches into slumber over  _ The Magickal Principium _ , he pretends not to notice. He looks for references to herbs that might help her sleep, then remembers that they’ll be impossible to get hold of in the sparse Coruscant markets. He only has a few days before he’ll need to return to the fortress, lest Snoke get suspicious, and if he can’t find a way of calming her she’ll be on her own with nothing to stop her nightmares.

Her screams summon him after midnight, easing only when he finds himself outside her door once more. He presses a hand against the wood, leaning into it like it will get him closer to her.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing here. He can’t do anything—his magic isn’t built for helping people. His training has ensured he knows endless ways of inflicting pain and suffering, but he knows nothing of making things better. 

“Please don’t cry, Rey,” he murmurs. 

By some miracle, her crying does stop, and she breaks into a gasp instead.

“You came back!”

He waits, listening for sounds of her moving around in the chamber, but she remains where she is. “You were crying again.”

“You know my name,” she says. “How do you know my name?”

He swallows, closing his eyes. “Kylo,” he replies. An answer to her question and an admission, a confession of his identity, if she listens carefully enough.

“Ugh. Him.” She only seems to take it as the former. “You can come in, you know.”

“I can’t.” He shouldn’t.

“Why?”

“You can’t see my face.”

“Why not?” For the first time, she’s suspicious.

He offers her the truth. “It causes me pain.”

“Like Phasma,” she mutters, almost to herself. Then, louder: “That’s why—that’s why Snoke makes them all wear masks? Whether he likes them or not, he makes it so they can’t show their face without it hurting them.”

He keeps silent, his assent to her question.

There’s a moment before Rey speaks again—movement and swishing. “I’ve closed the drapes. I won’t be able to see you.”

His hand squeezes into a fist against the door. “I shouldn’t.”

“I want to talk to you. Please.”

It’s such a sweet entreaty. She’s never normally this sweet to him. He’s already gripping the door handle, waiting for the pain to start, but nothing happens.

“You don’t know who I am.”

“I do!” she protests. “I know your voice—you were there in my head when I was fighting off Snoke in the fortress.”

He pauses, eyes squeezed shut as he realizes she’d not known that was  _ him _ , Kylo, trying to help her. “I was,” he agrees.

“Thank you. You helped me.”

The door’s open a fraction, and he doesn’t remember doing it. He hears Rey’s sharp intake of breath. She sniffles, and the blankets rustle again. He stills, worried she’s still going to try and find him in the darkness, but then she settles down. She hadn’t lied—the drapes are pulled tightly shut around the bed, and the room itself is painted in shades of black as Kylo edges inside, trying not to stumble over or walk into anything, subtly using magic to feel the space around him and guide himself.

He doesn’t know where to go or what to do with himself, and ends up propped up against one of the trunks, arms folded over his chest. They both hold their breaths, hold their silence, waiting for the other to break it.

Rey speaks first. “I’m glad I found you.” Her voice is so soft, timid in a way it’s never been in daylight. “At the fortress, your presence was the only thing that didn’t feel awful. I didn’t even know you were a person—I thought maybe I was imagining you—but it makes sense they didn’t let me know you were there. They couldn’t have me knowing there was somebody in that rotten place like you…”

All the air leaves his lungs like he’s been punched. That she can think of him in that way makes no sense; makes it difficult to do anything except gather enough breath to squeeze out a single syllable in reply. “ _ Me? _ ”

“Yes. I could feel from the first time you were in my head that you weren’t like the rest of them. You felt—good. Does that make sense?”

And it does, because that’s how Rey has always felt to him, pure and right and good. But that’s how she  _ is _ —whereas whatever makes him feel less ornery in her head is some strange quirk of magic he doesn’t understand. It’s like he’s tricked her somehow, but even he doesn’t know  _ how.  _

How can he respond without continuing the deception? He finds himself unable to make his mouth move, make himself form the words to reassure her that her nervous rambling makes perfect sense to him. 

He shouldn’t be here. He should go. This is all wrong.

“Why are you here?” Rey says into the taut silence.

“Because you were crying,” he tells her again. He wants her to understand what a siren call her cries are for him.

“No, I mean—are you—are you a prisoner of Snoke’s too?”

“Yes.”

It feels good to admit that out loud to her. Even if he can’t tell her the whole story, there’s something about revealing secrets like this that feels safer. More intimate. He wishes he could see her face, when there’s nothing between them like this. He’s not wearing his armor or mask and it’s as close to his old self as he’ll ever be.

“And you live here in the castle?”

“Sometimes.”

She seems to consider this. “It’s better than the fortress. And Kylo on his own isn’t so bad.”

“You think so?”

When she speaks again she trips over her words, flustered by something. “Well, I suppose—compared to Snoke, at least. He’s terrible and I don’t trust him, but he doesn’t make my skin crawl anymore.” 

_ Anymore.  _ That stings. 

“I just wish I could get away from Kylo entirely,” she continues, oblivious to the puncture wound her words have just created in his psyche.

“Me too.” More than she’ll ever know.

“Why does he keep you here? Is he trying to train you too?”

He lets out a sharp, humorless laugh. “No. Nobody trains me anymore. They just keep me a prisoner.”

“Why?”

He clamps his mouth shut. He wants to tell her, he really does—but what difference does it make? There’s nothing she can do to change the situation.

“Can’t you tell me?” she asks, oh so softly.

“I’m not sure,” he replies, truthfully. 

“Because of magic? Kylo’s trying to train me.” Her voice turns darker, bitter at this. “I didn’t even want to learn magic but I don’t seem to have much choice. But if you already know how to use magic—why can’t you escape?”

“My master’s magic is stronger than mine. I can’t break free of it.”

“What if—” her voice takes a hopeful note. “What if we could work together? What if I let Kylo train me and then when I know enough, we escape when he’s not around?”

“There’s no way out of here.” 

“There has to be. Kylo uses secret passages, perhaps if we—”

“You can’t use them,” he tells her sharply.

Silence lapses for a moment. He wishes again that he could see her face. What is she thinking? Feeling? For the first time, he’s having a conversation with her that isn’t underscored with her anger. But now—has he upset her? Scared her?

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m sure you’ve already tried that.”

“We can’t leave here,” Kylo replies, voice contrite. “I wish we could.”

“I’ll find a way. I will,” she swears sweetly.

“Why are you even trusting me? You don’t know who I am or why I’m here—”

“You feel safe to me,” she tells him, with equal sweetness. “It’s—it’s hard to explain. Everybody I’ve met since Kylo brought me to the fortress has felt a certain way. He’s all hot fire, Phasma is cold, Snoke is—Snoke is awful. Like death and decay. But you’re not like any of those things. Quieter but safe.”

She might as well have punched Kylo in the gut for the effect it has on him. He can’t summon words to reply to her—but why, why does he feel so different to her here, in the castle, than he does everywhere else? Or is it just now, in the quiet of the night, when she isn’t angry?

Or maybe. 

Maybe it’s because he’s not wearing the mask.

He’s never considered that before. Inside himself, even now, he still feels the way she described Kylo. It’s the core of him and that will never be extinguished, not while he remains under Snoke’s rule. But perhaps the mask does more than hide his face from the people around him. Perhaps it does more than keep him under Snoke’s thrawl. Nobody knows who’s underneath it, even those who mightm ordinarily recognize how his magic feels.

“Have I said something wrong?” Rey asks tentatively.

“No. No, I just—I’m wondering if I’m dreaming this conversation.”

She laughs, and he realizes it’s the first time he’s ever heard it, like fragments of sunlight spilling around him. “Maybe I am. But it’s a nicer dream than the one I was having before, so I’ll take it.”

“I’m glad that I’ve helped cheer you up a little, then.” 

“Why do they keep you here, and not in the fortress?”

“They…don’t. All the time.”

“Sometimes you’re a prisoner in the fortress too?”

“Yes.”

“Makes sense. All those empty cells. Maybe you were near me when I was there.”

“I was. It’s how I was able to reach you when Snoke was...training you.”

“Oh.” She considers this. “Are you Kylo’s prisoner? Is that why you’re in the castle now?”

“I think so. But I’m glad to be away from Snoke on the nights I spend here.”

“I understand that. He’s the worst thing I’ve ever felt. Has he—has he done that thing where he tries to get into your mind?”

“Yes.”

“Are you able to fight him off?”

“Most of the time. That’s how I knew what you needed to do.”

“Of course. Well—thank you.”

He clears his throat. “I’ve got to go.”

“Why? Kylo won’t be back until the morning. I’ll feel him—I’ll warn you before he gets here.”

“No. I’ve got to be back in my chamber before the morning. It’s too dangerous.”

“Your chamber is here?”

“Yes.”

“Above?”

“Please don’t look for me,” he pleads, the mere memory of the threat of being seen unmasked making every muscle in him clench in anticipation of the pain it will bring. 

“But—”

“No. You don’t understand the consequences.”

She responds to his pleading tone. “Fine.” But he suspects the matter isn’t resolved at all—he’ll have to take other measures to keep her out of the tower rooms. “Will you come back tomorrow night?”

“If I can.”

“Please. It’s been lonely since Kylo took me prisoner. I’ve been surrounded by people but had nobody to talk to.”

“—Very well. I’ll try.”

“Thank you. And I promise you this—I’m going to find a way to rescue both of us. I will.”

* * *

He retreats from her rooms on shaky legs, sealing the door closed again and approaching the foot of the stairs up to the tower. Already he can hear a lone bird singing a salute to dawn somewhere outside the castle—it’s still dark inside, but one stray ray of light into Rey’s room could have wreaked havoc.

Back in the tower, he abandons any notion of sleep for a bath. He keeps the water as cold as he can stand it, since a warm bath will only entice him to slumber. When he’s washed, he dons his full armor and the mask.

It’s been resting on top of a chest, incongruous in the confines of this room: black metal and a menacing heat. Next to it, his blade, glowing faintly red against the mahogany.

The sword he’d run his father through with now rests on the man’s own furniture. He’d utter an apology, if it would make any difference.

Orders are orders. A stronger man might be able to go against Snoke, but not Kylo. He’s the Emperor’s dog and forever will be, until the day Snoke decides he should die.

The mask, he puts on reluctantly. Today more than ever.

How wonderful it had felt to speak to somebody without it acting as a barrier between them. How strange it had been to hear his own voice, unfiltered like that. He only speaks when other people are around, never on his own, so the sound is a stranger even to himself.

Despite everything, he can’t risk going back to her. The more they talk, the more questions she’ll ask, and he doesn’t want to lie to her. Tonight he’ll seal himself away and know that even if she screams the castle down, she’s not in danger and he doesn’t need to go rushing to her aid.

Though if she’s screaming the castle down he’ll probably need to do something about it, in case somebody hears in the fortress below.

He eats breakfast from his supplies in the tower room then descends back down to the bottom of the keep through the passages. It would be quicker to enter via the portal straight into his—Rey’s—chamber, but he doesn’t want to risk walking in on her while she’s changing. She deserves her privacy so he’ll come and go in other ways.

He expects that he’ll have to rouse her when he reaches the chamber, but instead she’s lingering in the hallway, near the foot of the tower stairs, looking shifty though better rested than the last few days.

She definitely tried to get up into his tower.

“Breakfast,” he announces. “Not quite as hearty as you’re used to.”

She takes the plate from him eagerly anyway. “It’s a beautiful day. I’m going to eat this out in the courtyard.”

He heats it up when they get out there so it’s piping hot, and pretends not to watch as she wolfs it all down, although she does use a fork she’s located from somewhere.

When she’s finished, she looks at him expectantly.

“Are you going to train me today? Properly train me, not do that stuff Snoke was doing, or stick me in a library and tell me to read stuff that’s as old as the castle.”

Her eyes tighten at the mention of Snoke’s “training” despite the lightness of her tone.

“I’ve given the matter some thought,” Kylo replies. “I propose training will be split into three components: magical theory, magical practice, and fighting.”

“Theory is reading old books, isn’t it?” she asks, her lip curling in distaste.

“I can’t be here all the time. On the days when I have to commit to my duties elsewhere, I’ll expect you to dedicate your time to the library. If, and only if, you work hard at what I teach you when I am here, I’ll show you how to get into the library without me.”

“And fighting?”

“Is as important as learning how to control your powers. You’ve done well so far but it’s clear you’re self-taught. There are proper techniques it would benefit you to learn, both with your staff and without.” And if he wears her out every afternoon, hopefully she’ll sleep soundly and not go wandering around the castle. “Besides, if you show good progress, I have a gift for you.”

She narrows her eyes at him, but the rest of her face betrays her eagerness. “What kind of gift?”

“The kind you’ll only receive if you dedicate yourself.”

“Hmm.” She’s staring at him like if she looks long enough she might be able to pick an image of it out of his head. “I don’t think anybody’s ever given me a gift before.”

“Then you should be eager to earn this one.”

“Alright,” she concedes. “Where do we start?”

“You’ll be happy to hear—with magical practice rather than theory.” Her relief confirms she  _ is _ happy to hear that. “I do need to give you some basic theory that underpins all of what we are able to do.” To her credit, Rey does not roll her eyes or fidget. “The world around us is made up of matter and energy. Do you understand this?”

“Yes. It was in some of the machinery books I read in Niima.”

“Good. Our abilities, in people who can wield magic, help us to manipulate that matter and energy. But we can’t create or destroy them. Everything we do requires the use of energy, which we must pull from somewhere. If we take it from ourselves, then it comes from the food we eat, much as physical activity does. If we take too much, it can have a terrible impact. Kill us or worse.”

“Worse?” she asks with wry amusement.

“There is worse than a quick death,” Kylo assures her. If there wasn’t, they wouldn’t all be in this predicament.

“Alright, so—no attempting magic on an empty stomach.”

“Or without a source of energy to pull upon, though that’s more complicated. Fire is a possibility, but pull too much and you will literally get burned. Very adept users can pull energy from the air itself, although that will cause the temperature around them to drop.”

“Is that why Phasma always feels so cold?”

“Phasma? No, she isn’t capable of that. Her presence feels cold because of who she is.”

“Oh.” She considers this a moment. “What do I feel like?”

He flounders for a moment, trying to find a way of describing it that won’t sound like he’s reciting poetry to her. “You’re bright,” he eventually says. “I am thankful for the mask because I suspect without it you’d be painful to look at and be around.”

“Hey!”

“You asked,” he tells her with as much feigned disinterest and disdain as he can summon. “But energy transfer is the more difficult branch of magic. The simplest, the one you’ve already mastered to a certain degree, is manipulating matter.”

“Like pulling my staff to me or unlocking the door.” 

“Exactly, and that’s what we need to work on first—fine grained control of matter.”

Rey shuts her eyes and groans. “Are you about to bring out a pile of beans?”

“Is that what Phasma was trying to teach you? No wonder you stabbed her.”

She gapes at him. “Did you just make a joke?” 

“No. I have no sense of humor.”

“I’m dead, aren’t I? You actually killed me when Snoke told you to and the rest of this is some weird afterlife where I still can’t escape you.”

“Unfortunately, you are alive and rapidly waving goodbye to any hope of that gift.”

“Sorry.” She does look contrite.

“No, we’re not using beans. We’re using glass. You’re going to reassemble one of the shattered windows.”

_ “Kriff.” _

* * *

Rey is a natural. Kylo had no reason to doubt it, but to see her in action is another thing entirely. Once Kylo has explained sensing how the fragments of glass feel similar to each other, and how to draw them to her when she finds pieces that resonate the same, she quickly builds a pile of them out in the courtyard.

The next step is to move them into the right positions, like a jigsaw puzzle. 

“I’m guessing I’m not supposed to do that piece by piece?” she asks.

“You can, but it’s not the right way.”

“So what is the right way?”

“You encourage the glass to assemble itself.”

Rey has learned plenty of creative curses during her time in Jakku, and she employs them liberally. After a particularly inventive stream which covers several areas of anatomy, she sighs. “That’s nonsense. It has to be.”

“It’s not. The glass was in the form of that window longer than it’s been broken. The glassblower applied their own form of matter and energy manipulation when they created it, and that altered the glass forever. When it was smashed, it shattered apart in places it didn’t want to. If you let it guide you, it will do most of the work.”

“This  _ is  _ like Phasma and her stupid beans.”

“Well, when she explained to you how the process was meant to work—”

“She didn’t!” Rey protests.

“Are you saying that Phasma gave you a task without telling you how to achieve it?”

“Yes! She just gave me this pile of beans and told me to sort them into two piles without using my hands.”

“How is that supposed to help you learn?”

“It wasn’t, because I didn’t.”

More and more, Kylo is coming to see that Snoke’s intent had never been to teach Rey how to wield magic, no matter how powerful she is. Everything they’d done was a waste of her potential, weeks of progress squandered.

“Very well,” he replies, biting back his annoyance. “The easiest way to do it is to concentrate on one piece like you were before. Feel the edges and pull, like you do when you’re drawing your staff towards you, but let the glass do the work. It will guide the piece that should go next to it towards it. Move from section to section doing that, and you’ll soon have the window completed.”

“Okay.” She still sounds dubious, but closes her eyes anyway, her forehead creasing with concentration.

He circles his hand in the air above the pile of fragments, spreading it out across the flagstones so the pieces have more space to move, and settles himself down on the edge of the well to watch. 

At first her progress is slow. Her frown deepens, concentration absolute as she tries to do as he’s explained. The problem is that it’s instinctual—but if she can’t master this, she’ll never be a good magic user. She can’t progress to energy manipulation without this—not without being a danger to herself and others.

A few minutes pass before one the fragments flip over on the stone, sliding towards another piece and coming to rest besides it with a faint clink.

She opens her eyes, staring down at the ground. “Did it work?”

“Yes. Keep going.”

She does. Faster and faster once she’s realized what she needs to do, pieces skimming over the stone and each other until a picture has assembled itself at Rey’s feet. It’s about the length and breadth of his sword, and missing a few fragments, but it’s enough for him to see which window it used to be.

“Ezra slays the dragon,” he observes.

She glances down and gasps. “It’s so pretty!”

Kylo supposes it is. Or it was. The stained glass of Castle Alderaan was always superior quality, from back when it was rumored most glassblowers used magic in their compositions. Even cracked and grimy as it is, the colors are luminous. When sunlight poured through them, they’d appeared to glow.

“Can we put it back together properly?” she asks.

“With time.”

“I’d like that,” she says with a smile.

“Before then, it’s time to turn our attention to magical theory.”

Her smile drops.

* * *

He leaves her in the library with a different book. He’d started with  _ The Magickal Principium  _ because that’s the one Snoke had taught him with, but that had been Snoke’s own little form of torture for a ten-year-old prince. There are other, simpler books which had entertained that young boy far more.

So he’d left Rey with a copy of  _ A Grammar of Magic _ and headed back to Coruscant for food. She’d complained yesterday that his presence distracted her from reading, so if he left her to study while he made this journey she’d have no reason to be preoccupied.

There’s a hot meal waiting for him at Tekka’s Livery, two dishes covered by metal lids so they can be carried.

“You’d better bring my good crockery back,” Dasha Tekka scolds as she hands them over, with about as much fear of Kylo as her father. “It’s hard to come by nowadays.”

Kylo rolls his eyes behind the mask, aware she can’t see him do it. “Of course.”

He checks with Tekka the news about who has come and gone through Coruscant’s gates, and who has entered and left the fortress high on the hill. This information is useful currency in the city, allowing people to pack up their illegal enterprises long before they risk getting caught. Very few people in the fortress are from the kingdom’s once shining capital and have no connections there or understand how it works. Some of the servants do, but they aren’t going to risk the city’s secrets when it would endanger their families. There’s a deep web of loyalty and an even deeper web of secret cellars and hidden attics.

When Kylo returns to the castle, Rey is so engrossed in her book that he manages to startle her.

“I thought the book would be boring,” she tells him, eagerly taking a chunk of meat pie to bite into. “The title makes it sound dreary. But it’s actually really interesting.”

Her fingers are ink-stained where she’s been scribbling notes down on the parchment. Her handwriting hurts his eyes, but he supposes she’s never been taught good calligraphy, and has had precious little need to practice writing.

“Good. Have you found any surprises yet?”

Unlikely, since he knows the contents of the book back to front. 

Her face scrunches up as she thinks, munching on a mouthful of pie. “Somebody doodled a little cartoon of a dragon on one of the pages? That surprised me.”

_ Somebody _ being a young prince bored during a lesson with Snoke. “Not me.”

He retreats to let her finish the meal and read a while longer, telling her to meet him in the courtyard when she’s ready. He isn’t wearing his cloak today so doesn’t need to remove it, and he wishes he had his own book while he sits waiting. Instead he’s left alone with the empty courtyard, the eerily still castle, and the shattered pieces of his childhood surrounding him.

Whenever he’s returned in the past, usually to retreat to the library to consult the books, he’d never had cause to dwell. After he’d given up hope of looking for a way out of the trap Snoke had sprung closed around him he’d visited even the library as little as possible. Now, for the sake of Rey, he is facing hours, days, months and more in the place where he committed his worst acts.

That the castle is as broken and deserted as it is, is his doing. The fragments of the window Rey pieced back together do nothing except remind him of this place in all its glory; the light and magic that had spilled through the air, this yard brimming with life. He knows enough of his mother’s reign to understand she wasn’t perfect as a ruler, still steadying the ship after the worst days of his grandfather’s madness, but she’d also been fair, wise, and generous. No magic was forbidden, no words or thoughts outlawed. Now those same things are either a death sentence or a way for Snoke to twist others to his bidding.

Despite the stillness, the ghosts of his memories shimmer on the edge of his vision. He can almost hear Athgar the cook chasing him out of the kitchens into this very yard, yelling at him to bring back the fruit pie he’d stolen from the pantry. When caught and punished by his mother’s steward, Kylo had complained that he was a prince, and it wasn’t stealing if everything belonged to him anyway. Leia’s explanation that he was wrong—that because he had access to more than most he had no right to take what was intended for those with less—had fallen on deaf ears.

But Athgar’s footsteps and curses are just a memory. The castle contains no ghosts, because ghosts don’t exist. His exhaustive search of the library confirmed as much, and Kylo has never been sure if he’s relieved that, wherever his father is, it’s not in the outer courtyard where he fell.

Kylo is startled back to the present moment by a handful of apples dropping to the ground from the closest tree, smashing to pulp against the ground. Their skin is grey with rot, even though all had been bright and green this morning.

Rey emerges into the yard warily, although there’s a hint of her usual eagerness to spar lurking underneath. She kicks the pulp of the apples out of her path, frowning at the mess they’ve made.

“No staff?” she observes when she reaches Kylo. “No sword.” 

That, he’s stashed in the passages where she can’t get her hands on it. “We’re not using those today.” He hands her a wooden sword, flourishing his own. He’d retrieved them from the old garrison store, where they’d been left behind during the ransacking of the castle because they were seen as useless for anything except firewood.

They’re surprisingly heavy, the weight in Kylo’s hand something he’d forgotten over the years. It was a deliberate choice—there was little point practicing with something so comparatively lightweight that wielding a real sword needed a period of adjustment.

“Today I’m going to teach you the basic forms of sword fighting. It’s like magic—there’s a lot of theory to learn first about how to stand and move, which will help you be better at it and stop you from injuring yourself.”

“And be better at injuring other people.”

“That is the idea, yes.”

She chews on her lip, frowning down at the weapon in her hand. “What if I don’t want that?”

“Nearly all magic users are also adept with a sword. If you ever end up facing one who means you harm, you need to know how to protect yourself. That may mean knowing how to hurt them. You do that with your staff.”

“Yes but I can’t really hurt someone with my staff. I can’t stab them. I’ve never killed anybody with it.”

“It’s possible to kill with any weapon. When you knocked Vicrul out against the well in Niima, if he hadn’t been wearing his helmet, he probably would be dead now.”

She blanches at that.

“Don’t worry, Vicrul has always had a thicker skull than most.”

“I only want to learn enough to protect myself,” she says, chin raising in determination. It’s Kylo’s favorite gesture of hers, one that says:  _ This is the line. This is who I am, this is my boundary and you won’t cross it. You won’t make me cross it either. _

“I’ll teach you what you need to know,” he tells her. “What you do with it is up to you. Since there’s only me here and I have no intention of letting you kill me, you shouldn’t need to use your skills to hurt anybody.”

She considers this, looking for the loopholes. “Are you planning on keeping me here forever, then?”

_ Yes. Yes, I plan on keeping you here where you are safe and protected from everybody in the world except me. _ Except that’s not fair to her. He can’t keep her locked here for her entire life, like a canary in a gilded cage. She’s barely reached her majority and there’s the whole of Alderaan for her to see. Even the continent beyond Alderaan. She deserves the world, not being confined to this dead, empty place.

“If you become skilled enough to survive in the outside world, I’ll consider relocating you to somewhere less confined.” 

He has no idea where. She needs to be near the fortress if he’ll continue to teach her, and he can’t exactly set her up with a residence in Coruscant, no matter how good she becomes at disguise and subterfuge.

Then it dawns on him. If he’s taught her all he knows, she won’t need to be near him at all. He could send her to Naboo, where she would be safe from Snoke.

Except he’d never see her again. 

There  _ is _ a way to get her out of the kingdom—all it would take is a boat stashed in the river cave. Then Rey could make the same journey his mother had. He could send her with plenty of food, and a note to Leia explaining that Rey needed proper training from the best masters in Naboo—masters who would be kind to her and pleased with her progress. He could include a letter of apology to his mother, one Rey would not read if sworn not to, one that would explain as best he could to his mother why he’d done all that he’d done without revealing what Snoke forbade him to. Perhaps then somebody in Naboo would be able to untangle the web of thorns Alderaan was caught in, with Kylo at the center of it all.

He could do that, but it would mean he’d never see Rey again. And the thought of that makes his heart seize, makes his breath catch, makes his stomach squeeze tightly into knots. The girl he’d met only a handful of weeks before is now the most precious thing in his life. He can’t bear to let her go because without her, he’d be returning to a realm of shadows and despair. She feels like light to him, yes, but that light comes in the form of hope. Hope for what, he’s not sure. A better life? A better future? That she will love him like—

Ah. 

That’s the problem.

“How long do you think that will take?” Rey asks, like he hasn’t just come to a monumental realization about why exactly he’s going to all these lengths to keep her with him. 

He pushes these thoughts to the side. Being at war with himself won’t help Rey learn; he needs to focus on sword fighting forms. He drops into the right stance, visualizing the target zones of Shii-Cho.

“That depends entirely on you.”

* * *

The promise of freedom seems to motivate her more than the promise of a gift, and Rey works hard to learn the forms. He returns her to the library while he goes for one last meal—taking Dasha Tekka her dishes back—and when he comes back he finds her curled up under the bureau, nose buried in  _ A Grammar _ .

“What are you doing down there?” he asks when he finally figures out where she is.

She shrugs. “I don’t know, it felt safe being down there. Cozy.”

He doesn’t sigh. Instead he finds it endearing.

“There are other places you can read,” he tells her.

She cocks her head in question.

“There are alcoves. Finish your dinner and I’ll show you.”

When her plate is cleared, he indicates she should follow him, then sets off down one of the aisles towards where the shelves line the entire wall. Or so it seems.

He presses a hand to one of the books, twisting it just so, and an entire section of shelves moves with his hand, swinging out to reveal the secret room behind it.

Rey gasps in delight. Bright afternoon sunlight is flooding into the little room, washing it in shades of gold and pink. The space is small enough that he always thought of it as a reading nook, a hidden space where one could tuck themselves in and read undisturbed. It’s almost claustrophobic to him now, but that’s because he’s grown so large—the people who built the library were designing for his family, who were always petite until his father’s less-than-noble, larger-than-life blood was added to the equation.

The walls are lined with velvet, the floor is covered with a plush rug, and there is an upholstered bench that has a pile of cushions stacked upon it. The windows are set above head height, so nobody can see into the room, but the place is bright enough to read without a lamp during daylight.

“There are a few of these in the library. I found them—” as a child. “—when I first studied here. I won’t show you the others. It’s up to you to find them.”

“Do I get rewards for those too?” She smiles at him, deep dimples in her cheeks, and he is momentarily robbed of breath. Her hair is glowing, brushed golden, and her eyes are warm amber in the light, but it’s nothing compared to her simple smile, gone within a second.

“If you can think of something you’d like,” he tells her when he is able to form words.  _ Anything. I’ll give you anything. _

“Hmm.” She looks around the space. “I like it.”

Not that they can linger. “The sun will be setting soon. You should get back to your chambers. Take the food.”

“Okay.” She agrees too quickly, and he knows she doesn’t plan to stay in them. “You know, I reckon I could get the kitchens up and running again. Not all of it, but a good clean and a few repairs, and I’ll be able to heat my own food up. Maybe even learn to cook. So you won’t have to keep ferrying meals to me all the time.”

“That would be—helpful.” Except he likes watching Rey eat. He likes knowing that she’s provided for. “For when I can’t be here. I shall endeavor to bring a stock of food for you.”

She picks up the plate and the copy of  _ The Grammar _ , but he takes the book from her hand. “You can’t take this with you. The library doesn’t allow books to be removed.”

“Then how—?”

“Notes. You take notes.”

He glances down at the page she’d been reading, shakes his head, and puts the book down on the desk. It’s a good thing she didn’t take notes from this section. Creating light? No good will come from her trying that so soon in her training.

He locks up behind her, trailing her down to the courtyard and waiting for her to enter the main keep. She lingers in the doorway, staring at him for a moment.

“Same thing tomorrow?”

“If I can be spared. I believe that I will be.”

She nods. “I’ll think on those rewards.” Her gaze tracks over his shoulder, across to the windows of the library. He knows what she intends to do when he leaves.

“Take no risks, Rey,” he warns her. “Snoke has eyes everywhere.”

She rolls her own eyes and retreats inside. He waits until he can hear her moving up the stairs before he backtracks to the nearest portal, which lies within the kitchens. When he’s sheltered within the passages he removes his helmet, to mute his presence, then makes his way up the keep.

He pauses in passage outside Rey’s quarters, beside the portal he first took her through, listening to make sure she’s inside. He can hear her moving around in there, the pipes to the refresher faintly clanking. Then he carries on, up into the tower room. He takes the opportunity to wash up himself. Rey’s work is good—the hot water reaches all of the castle, and the floor beneath his feet is warm as well. Some of the engineers who worked in the castle would have been honored to have her as their apprentice.

He shifts into simpler clothing and waits for night to fall, finding his thoughts dragged back to his revelation out in the courtyard.

If he loves Rey, he should want the best for her. He should be doing everything he can to get her to safety, far from Snoke and the ever-looming danger of discovery and death. But he isn’t doing that, proving that he’s every bit the wretched creature that Snoke has proclaimed him as and Rey understands him to be.

It’s for the best, he reasons. The masters in Naboo may be adept but they don’t understand Snoke and cannot defeat him. They know this, or they’d have invaded years ago, joining the Resistance movement when his mother was first exiled. Only Kylo knows Snoke well enough to maybe understand how to defeat Snoke, even if he knows he’s not capable of it himself. Not cursed the way he is. The only way to protect Rey is to teach her all he can, so she may use it to protect herself if she ever needs to. She won’t learn that in Naboo. And she wouldn’t be safe in Naboo forever. So he will keep her close, and safe, until she is ready to be turned loose, even if he can admit his decision is rooted in a selfish need to be close to her.

As for this night, Kylo knows what he must do. Rey is hoping her visitor will return tonight; if he doesn’t, she will try looking for him. She may also attempt to go back to the library, to try and break in behind Kylo’s back. She’d already flipped to the section about creating light in  _ The Grammar _ , and Kylo isn’t convinced she hasn’t tried to memorize the basic theory to try to light her way. 

The only way to stop her is to give her what she wants.

The moon is the thinnest sliver in the sky outside his window when he creeps down towards Rey’s chamber. She’s in there, and she’s awake. Restless. The strip beneath the door is dark, which means the room is dark and safe for him to enter.

He tries the handle, and it opens easily.

She’s waiting for him. Even in the darkness, he can feel how alert she is. She’s been waiting; the curtains are drawn over the windows, and the drapes around the bed are closed. 

“Is it you?” she whispers. “Have you come back?”

“Yes,” he replies. “And you don’t need to whisper—there’s only us here. Nobody can hear us.”

It feels intimate. More intimate than he has any right to.

He seeks the chair in the corner of the room, almost tripping over the edge of a rug on his way. Now he’s here, he’s got no idea what to say to her. She’s going to ask so many questions, and he’s going to have to navigate them as carefully as he can.

But it’s nice. Being in the same space as somebody without the mask. Having a conversation where it’s his real voice speaking the words, unfiltered and undistorted. 

“I’ve been thinking about why you can’t show your face,” she tells him. “And how Snoke makes them all wear masks. Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know.” He doesn’t, not really. Himself, he understands—but to do it to all the warriors? Why them and not Hux? The only plausible answer is it gives Snoke even greater control over them; Kylo is beginning to suspect there’s a deeper magic woven into the masks than he ever thought possible. “Maybe he’s jealous of how everyone else looks.”

Rey laughs. “You’re right. He is ugly! Although I can’t imagine Kylo Ren looks much better than him.”

Kylo winces. He’s got very little vanity but he would like to think he’s not as ugly as  _ Snoke _ .

Instead, he forces himself to laugh. “They probably all look terrible under the masks. Maybe that’s why Snoke makes everyone wear them.”

Her mood turns, shifting from light and playful to more sombre. He feels it, her light dimming. Or perhaps not so much dimming as changing, from the brightest, hottest sun over a desert at midday, to the bittersweet colors of a sunset.

“Where were you all day?” she asks. 

He doesn’t answer, because he doesn’t want to lie to her.

“Why are you here?”

“I told you—I’m a prisoner, like you.”

“But why are they keeping you prisoner? Why not kill you?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“You know?”

“Yes. I just can’t tell you.”

She sucks in a breath of frustration. “Has Snoke done that? Like he’s made it painful for people to see your face?”

_ Yes. _

“Can you at least tell me your name?” she asks in response to his silence.

He pauses, waiting for something to stop him from speaking it aloud. It’s been years and he doesn’t know if he even can anymore—if something Snoke has done will prevent him from imparting the secret to another person.

But his mouth forms the shape of the words and his voice cooperates.

“It’s Ben.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on [Tumblr](https://cellar-darlings.tumblr.com/) for a teaser of chapter eleven on August 22nd!


	12. Chapter Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben.
> 
> Rey rolls the name around in her head, tries it on her tongue without giving it voice. It’s a nice name. Familiar—fairly common, although she doesn’t think she remembers ever knowing a Ben before.
> 
> “It’s nice to meet you, Ben.” She likes being able to call him something, to give a name to the feel of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter when I first sent it to my beta was ~5500 words long. It is now over 8200 words long. She shapes this story so much, so thanks again to Reylonging (and her insistence on cake...which you will shortly discover).

_Ben._

Rey rolls the name around in her head, tries it on her tongue without giving it voice. It’s a nice name. Familiar—fairly common, although she doesn’t think she remembers ever knowing a Ben before.

“It’s nice to meet you, Ben.” She likes being able to call him something, to give a name to the _feel_ of him.

She’s been frustrated through their conversations so far, with him avoiding most of her questions. At least he’s been able to answer one of them.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she tells him. “It’s been lonely in this castle without somebody to talk to.”

“I know how you feel,” he says, softly. Wistfully.

“How long have you been here?”

“Here?”

“Well, how long have you been a prisoner?”

“Years.”

Her heart breaks. She’s barely survived a few weeks with Snoke and Kylo—she thinks it’s been six at most since she was taken from Niima. Ben has been with them for so much longer than that. 

“Do they—do they hurt you?”

He’s very quiet when he replies. “Yes.”

She wants to cry—for both of them. She barely knows this man, doesn’t even really know him at all. But she knows this much: his energy signature is soft and welcoming, a contrast to the energy signatures she’d felt in the fortress. Where they’d all unsettled her, kept her on edge and straining to get away from them, Ben feels like somebody she could sink into. He’s warm. Muted and maybe a little dark, but soothing nonetheless. When she’d felt him in her mind, the times he’d helped her in the fortress, she’d trusted him. He’s a contrast to everyone and everything she’s known, even before she was taken to the fortress.

Everyone except the fuzziest, cloudiest memory of who she presumes was her mother. And she’s not sure that even counts—it’s barely a memory, more of a sense of comfort and complete trust. Ben is the closest thing Rey has ever felt of that warmth since it went away.

She’s never felt this comfortable around anybody before. It’s why she’d been so eager for him to come back, despite herself. A decade she’d spent building her defenses against the outside world, and somehow Ben manages to slip through them without even trying. After a day with Kylo, he’s healing the sore edges of her energy that have been frazzled by Kylo’s constant anger. She wants to lean into his presence, like he’s a warm bath ready to soothe her and wash away the hurt.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him, and she means it. For how good he feels to her, that he’s survived is a miracle, but he must be in a lot of pain of his own.

“It’s not your fault.”

“What about your family?”

“Dead and gone.” He sounds bitter about that.

“Mine too. It was Snoke’s fault.”

“ _Everything_ is Snoke’s fault.”

“You’re right. This entire kingdom—ruined by him. I hate him.”

“Me too.”

“But—you’re strong in magic, aren’t you? You must be, if you’ve survived this long. If Snoke is keeping you prisoner, it must have something to do with magic—”

“Yes.”

“You can’t use it to fight back against Kylo? Is he stronger than you?”

“Yes, he’s stronger than me.”

She takes that information, running it back through all the fairy tales she’s ever heard, every story of magical heroism she’s ever read. 

Ben is a prisoner, kept under lock and key by Kylo for Snoke. He’s tortured but not killed, because they need him for some reason. And he can’t tell her anything he knows about why.

“Are you…cursed?”

He doesn’t reply, and she listens to the soft pattern of his breathing.

“You are, aren’t you.” There’s no reply, but she knows that if it weren’t true, he’d be telling her so. “I understand now.”

“Please don’t—”

“I know, we can’t talk about it, or it’ll hurt you.” When she’d tried escaping the fortress in the dark of night, Kylo had followed her, but not without taking the time to cover his face. They’re all affected, it seems, only poor Ben isn’t given the dignity or protection of a mask like the others. “Let’s talk about other things. Nicer things.”

He chuckles, and it’s a lovely sound, very low and resonant. “I’m not sure I have many nice things to talk about.”

“I’ll start, then. I’m learning to use magic and Kylo’s taken me into the library which is full of books about magic.”

“You like books?” he asks softly.

“I do. I’ve never had many, and any I did find were usually old battered things. I’ve never seen so many books together in one place before now! Don’t tell Kylo this, but it’s wonderful.”

Ben laughs again, and Rey wants to bottle the sound and drink it. “I won’t, I promise.”

“In fact—we probably shouldn’t talk to him about this at all.”

“No. No, that’s a good idea.”

Maybe she should even avoid discussing her thoughts about Kylo with Ben too. To think she’d accidentally said something nice about Kylo during their second conversation, almost revealing to Ben that she doesn’t hate Kylo as much as she wants to.

“Good. It can be our little secret. We can be friends and keep each other company.”

“I’d like that. I don’t think I’ve ever had a friend before.”

“Me either,” Rey admits. “But now seems like a good time to start.”

“It does,” he agrees. “So you like the library?”

“I do! I want to try and go there when he’s not around. He’s promised me a reward if I can get in by myself. And another if I can find the secret alcoves.”

“What kind of reward?”

“I haven’t decided that yet.” Then she remembers the fruit trees out in the courtyard, and the not-yet-ripe-enough-to-eat-apples. “An apple!”

“That’s not much,” Ben says, “I think Kylo would bring you that as part of your meal, if you asked. You should expect more for a reward. What do you like?”

“Hmmm. I don’t know.”

“How can you not know what you like?”

“I just...I haven’t had much chance to discover it. I know what I need—food, and water, and rest—but apart from that, I’ve never had a chance to stop and think about what I want. I’ve always been driven by the need to get food. Any food.”

“That sounds awful. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” She shrugs his pity away, even though she knows he can’t see it. “I survived. I don’t think I could have lasted even a day in Snoke’s court if I hadn’t been through it.”

“I’m sure you could. I _know_ you’re strong and brave.”

His words make her squirm, make her light up inside in ways she doesn’t fully understand. Nobody has ever said nice things like this to her, or been so kind. 

“I’m not brave at all,” she admits. She takes a shuddering breath before continuing with her confession. “I’m terrified. All the time.”

His voice is softer than ever when he responds. “Of course you are.” There’s a pause, and then his own whispered revelation. “So am I.”

“I think I could be brave for you,” she murmurs back. “And strong.”

He doesn’t respond, but she can feel his surprise, his awe, hanging in the air between them. Maybe it’s a strange thing to say to somebody she barely knows, whose face she’s never seen, but if he’s the only good person in this entire kingdom then she doesn’t care. It’s easier to be brave for somebody else than for herself alone—she already vowed to rescue him from Snoke, and if he’s spent years as his prisoner then it’s important she honor her promise.

When he eventually replies, his voice is rougher than before. “Was it so bad? Wherever you were, that you never had the chance to learn what you like?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Niima is razed and only makes her think of all the people who were doing their best to survive in the wasteland Snoke created. “It’s in the past—it doesn’t matter anymore.” 

“Okay. So, what are your favorite foods? Fruit, bread, cake—”

“Cake! I haven’t had that in…” She trails off, unsure. She must have eaten it at some point, because the sense memory is there, the soft texture and sweet taste on her tongue. She remembers enough to know she liked it. “I’m not sure when I last had it. But it was good.”

“Then ask Kylo for some cake as your prize.”

She smiles into the darkness. “I think I will.”

“And here’s a secret: if you go to the section near the bureau that’s all about magical animals and pull out the white book, that leads you to one of the nooks.”

“Thank you! I’ll show him that as soon as I can.”

They lapse into peaceful silence, and Rey feels her eyelids drooping, her attention drifting.

“I should go,” Ben says.

“No—I want you to stay.”

“Rey, we both need to sleep. Our wits need to be sharp.”

“But will you come back tomorrow?”

“If I can.”

“Promise me.”

“I can’t—”

“ _Promise_.”

“Unless Kylo has me in the fortress, I’ll come see you tomorrow night.”

“Thank you.”

She listens to him depart, settling herself back into the bed even though her mind is still buzzing. She doesn’t want to sleep, despite her exhaustion, but she folds the memory of Ben’s presence around her and it lulls her into peace within minutes.

* * *

Kylo is late in the morning. She’s ready for him long past dawn, eating some of the food he brought on the first morning when her stomach rumbles and then creeping out of the room to explore.

She can’t feel him in the castle. Not that it means anything, but he’s not near her, at least.

Time to explore.

She already tried the door at the bottom of the staircase up to the tower yesterday, but it’s like trying to open a solid wall. The door might as well not be there, and she can feel the subtle pulse of magic underneath. Ben must be trapped up there during daylight, unless Kylo has already taken him away, down to the fortress for some horrible reason.

That means they’ll need to escape at night. It’s not a problem—in fact, the darkness will provide them with cover as they go. She just needs to factor it into her plans. But it also reminds her that Ben can’t show his face to her, and she can’t get them out of here in a blindfold. They’ll need to find a way of covering his face so he isn’t in pain all the time.

The other rooms in this part of the keep she hasn’t yet seen, so she creeps through them. On this level and the one below, they’re just bedchambers, but they’re in worse condition than the one she’s sleeping in. They’ve been ransacked, furniture smashed and emptied years ago. The windows have fared better, all in one piece, and she’s thankful for that or the cold would really seep through the castle at night.

She makes it all the way down to the bottom floor without coming across Kylo. He hadn’t promised that he’d be back today, and maybe Snoke has sent him on another mission. 

What she ought to do is go to the library and see if she can get into it. If the lock is as simple as the door into her cell in the fortress, she’d have that open in no time, and could be smugly waiting there for her reward when he arrives.

But. She did vow she’d find a way out of here. This is the perfect time to look.

The kitchens, she already knows the layout of well because of the time she spent in them fixing up the furnace. She only went into the workshops for tools, but now she combs every inch of them looking for signs of the hidden doors Kylo uses to move around the castle.

That’s what Kylo had revealed to her yesterday, even if he hadn’t meant to. The castle is full of secrets—the passages, and the alcoves in the library. If she’s persistent, she can uncover all of them, using them to free herself and Ben.

But the workshops appear to be solidly built, with only doors and windows leading out into the courtyard. If there are magic doorways into passages, Rey can’t even find them, let alone open them. 

She turns her attention to the mess hall, discovering another staircase down below ground which she guesses must lead to the dungeons. She knows some of the passages run underneath the castle—she and Kylo had come underneath the moat and then into the dungeon level the night they arrived—which means that there must be a way into them from down there. But it’s utterly dark before Rey gets to the bottom of the stairs, and she has no means to cast light.

Right. That’s her priority then.

She can feel Kylo now, as well. On the edge of her consciousness, buzzing away like he normally does. She bolts up the stairs to the library, determined to get in and claim a reward from him. 

The door to the library stands ajar when she gets there, and as she peers inside, she finds Kylo sitting at the bureau, his booted feet propped up on the top of it and his attention buried in a thick tome. Rey finds herself wondering how exactly he manages to read through his mask, given she can’t see his eyes, before her attention is stolen by the sight of his ungloved hand resting casually next to an empty dinner plate.

It’s unusual that Kylo bares any skin before her, yet this morning one glove has been peeled off and discarded on the bureau. She’s transfixed by the sheer size of his hand in comparison to the plate. Something about it being...well, _naked_...makes it look even bigger than normal, like the glove somehow usually constrains his size, but today it is evident that his hand can easily cover the entire width of the porcelain it rests besides. His skin is ghostly pale, a bright white against the dark wood of the bureau, and his nails are surprisingly neat and manicured. They don’t look like warriors hands to Rey, and they are nowhere near as rough and worn as her own, yet they clearly contain an unfair amount of strength within them.

“Glad you decided to finally join me,” he says without looking up from the book, snapping Rey’s attention away from his bare skin. “Today’s lesson will be about perfecting what you did yesterday.”

* * *

“Are you concentrating?” Kylo asks.

Rey squints at the ground, resisting the urge to rub her temples. “Of course I’m concentrating!” she snaps in response. “I’ve been doing nothing else for the past hour.”

Somehow, he expects her to reassemble an entire window without first calling the pieces to her. Before they'd left the library, he'd claimed that showing her an etching of the assembled window would help her summon the shards of _Breha's last procession_ towards her in one go and have them lay themselves on the flagstones in the right configuration. It had been a pretty picture, but she’d hardly had time to commit it to memory. 

Instead, Kylo’s silent presence and her earlier realization that she needs to help Ben hide his face has got her musing on masks again. Why Snoke wants magic users wearing them. Why they aren’t allowed to show their faces. How the masks even _work_. It has to be magic—she realizes she’s always assumed there was some kind of magic involved that let the wearer see and breathe on the other side of all that metal—but now that she considers it, it’s infinitely more confusing.

“Then why haven’t you finished your task yet?” he challenges her. “Have you even located the pieces in your mind?”

“No, but—”

“So you’ve gone backwards!”

She huffs. “I have other things on my mind.”

He stiffens. “Like what?” The words are soft enough to verge on ominous.

Rey takes a moment to deliberate whether to ask Kylo to tell her the truth—to wonder whether she should even be broaching into this territory—but Kylo isn’t _quite_ as terrifying anymore. At best, he’ll flounce back off to the fortress and leave her on her own for a while.

“Masks,” she replies defiantly.

If she thought Kylo was still before, it’s nothing compared to now. She’s not even sure he’s breathing. A minute ticks by before his quiet voice echoes her. “Masks.”

“Yes. Like—why do you have to wear one? Why is Snoke so keen on his warriors wearing them? Why not Hux?”

Now she can hear him breathing, but nothing else. Though she can’t see his face move under the mask, she swears he opens his mouth and closes it multiple times.

“It’s not my place to say,” he eventually responds. “If you aren’t making progress, we should return to theory until you’re in a position to properly apply yourself.”

He sweeps away after his snippy comment, but Rey can sense that she’s rattled him. And his reply was odd—why isn’t it his place to tell her about his own mask? 

Not for the first time, she finds herself wondering where Kylo Ren came from. What exactly led him to agreeing to put that stupid thing on his head? And what, precisely, lies beneath it?

* * *

By the end of the afternoon, Rey has made careful notes on another couple of chapters of _The Grammar of Magic_ —though not the parts about creating light—and finds herself studying the etching of _Breha’s last procession_. It really is a stunning piece of work, even though the ink on the page cannot possibly have captured the colors of the real glass. The procession in question is of some ancient queen—Rey assumes, based on her crown—being carried on her funeral dais as flowers spill out around her.

When Kylo leaves to fetch another hot meal, she follows the hint Ben gave her, locating the shelves that cover magical creatures and pulling the white book so the shelf swings open before her.

It’s another nook, a mirror image of the other one.

She scribbles a hasty note telling Kylo to find her, then takes her book and shuts herself inside.

Her pulse is high, her breathing quick, even though she’s not doing anything wrong. Kylo has challenged her to do this. Yet she feels nervous about hiding from him like this.

No. Not nervous. _Excited_. Excited at the thought of him searching for her and finding her. It doesn’t make sense—time away from Kylo is a good thing, so why is her body reacting this way? Why does she feel like she did when she was running from him through the woods?

A tiny voice in the back of her mind whispers the truth to her: because it’s like escaping from him again. She’s tried to run before and been caught. This time it’s inevitable he will find her—it’s part of the game. And she _wants_ him to.

She shakes her head to try and quiet the voice, looking around at the little space she’s in.It really is very cozy inside the nook. The afternoon sun warms it, but she thinks the pipes run under the floorboards to heat the space up when there’s no sun. She curls up on the plush bench, stacking cushions behind her back to prop herself up, and flips to the chapter about light.

Like Kylo had explained the day before, it’s not really about creating light. It’s about channeling energy from one source and turning it into light. The book says it’s simple, as far as energy manipulation goes—but she wonders if she’s jumping too far ahead of Kylo’s training, and how badly it could go if she does it wrong. 

The best she can do is memorize the instructions in here and then find a good heat source. Maybe the furnace? 

She feels Kylo return before she hears him, stomping his way down the library and then setting the plate on the desk with a clink. She listens for the shuffle of paper, and braces herself for him to find her.

It should be easy. She can feel him out there, so it’s a matter of him tracking her energy, which he’s done before. The skill has been mentioned in _The Grammar_ , alongside with the ability to mask your own energy, something she’s very interested in. 

She waits, gaze fixed on the panel in front of her, waiting for it to swing open. Instead she hears him walk away, over to the nook he showed her yesterday. She holds her breath as the shelf scrapes open, then closes shut. He moves further down the aisle and she hears that sound again—which means there’s another hidey-hole over there somewhere, waiting to be found.

And find it she will.

It’s embarrassing how long it takes him to find her, really. She’s sat with her arms folded waiting for him when the wall in front of her finally shifts, opening up to reveal Kylo’s massive, black-clad frame behind it.

“Took you long enough,” she says, getting up and squishing through the gap to get past him. Dinner is more pie, not that she’s going to complain about that. 

“The nooks are sealed. When you’re inside them, you can’t be sensed.”

Interesting. She files that away for later. “That sounds like an excuse to me. Do I get a reward now?”

“You never told me what you wanted,” he points out.

“No, but I _have_ decided what I want.”

“What?”

She grins. “Cake.”

“Cake? Is that all?”

“Yes. A good cake, though. Chocolate. With buttercream.” The memory of the flavor is a ghost in her mouth, rich and tantalizing.

“That might be hard to come by.”

“If you don’t, why should I believe you when you tell me you’re going to give me something?”

He hesitates. “I will find you some cake.”

“Good.”

* * *

That night, Rey waits eagerly for Ben. She has a plan this time; when she’s drawn the curtains and got into bed, she takes out a strip of her old clothes—the desert linens she’d once worn, laundered clean down in the fortress—and wraps it around her eyes.

He has to come. He promised. He’s the only thing that keeps her nightmares at bay.

Like Kylo, she feels him before she hears him, attuned to his gentle approach now. She tenses when she hears the click of the door handle being twisted, but it’s an eager tenseness; holding her breath waiting for something good to happen.

“Rey,” he murmurs. “Please close the drapes.”

She turns her head in his direction. “I don’t need to—I have a blindfold on.”

“You—do?”

“I do.” She reaches out to pat the foot of the bed, then shifts back to curl up against the headboard. “I didn’t like being closed in, and I didn’t like you sitting all the way over there.”

She hears him creep inside, and she can feel his hesitation. He’s closer than last night and it helps her feel his emotions, the jittery pulse that suggests he’s nervous.

“I don’t know. That’s very close.” He’s tall. He has to be, because even though he’s stood somewhere beside the bed, she has the urge to turn her face up towards him, where his voice is coming from. It feels like turning her face towards the sky on a sunny day, pleasant and warm. He’s tall like Kylo is, but where Kylo’s size is intimidating, Ben doesn’t feel that way at all.

“We don’t have to touch!” she reassures him. “If you don’t want to be near me then I guess—”

“No, I do. I do.”

She’s not sure how a voice that is so deep and rich can also be so timid. It makes her want to be very, very gentle with him.

“Then sit. I don’t bite.”

He chuckles, and she wants to wrap herself into the sound. “I think you do, if provoked.”

“In self-defense,” she insists. “I don’t think I’ll need to, though.”

“You won’t,” he assures her. “Now—tell me about your day.”

* * *

Kylo is late again the next morning. She’s tempted to try the light trick when she’s in the kitchen, pulling heat from the furnace, but instead decides to work on fixing the stove instead. If he’s going to insist on being late with breakfast she wants a way to heat food up, and she doesn’t want to think about how reliant on regular meals she’s getting, or what it would be like to go back to not knowing where her next meal is coming from.

At one point all the cooking for the castle must have taken place in the enormous fireplace that takes up one wall. Rey is able to stand upright inside it, and old cauldrons litter the grate, while a large spit crosses the space. There’s a big stove connected to the furnace: it has two wood-fired ovens big enough to get entire chickens in to roast, and a space on top where pans can be heated up. 

It needs cleaning more than repairing, so she finds a bucket and uses an old towel to give it all a scrub with soap and hot water.

Really, it’s obvious that although the castle got ransacked, it hasn’t been picked through by scavengers. Plenty was destroyed, especially on the lower floors, but plenty was left behind. If Rey had turned up to Unkar Plutt’s stall with the contents of the kitchens, she’d have eaten for months. 

Maybe living in the castle isn’t so bad. Life is easier than Jakku, that’s for sure. She’s relatively certain of where her next meal is coming from, she has a warm bed to sleep in, and she can have hot baths as often as she likes. She’s clean in a way she hasn’t been in years—and there are tubs and tools to wash and dry her clothes too.

It’s still not freedom, but she can enjoy it when Kylo isn’t around.

Truth to be told, she doesn’t hate his presence either. She’s enjoying her lessons with him, reluctant as she was to learn magic after her lessons at the fortress. Kylo has a clear way of explaining things to her, and he’s patient as she fumbles her way through what he wants her to do. He’s different without Snoke around, a biting sense of humor fighting its way out, even if she refuses to laugh at it. His company is better than none at all.

That gives her a start. She’s used to no company at all, and for years she thought nothing of it. She survived with no help, no friends, no companions. Now she has people to talk to, to share her time with. She can even share her thoughts and feelings with Ben, and she has _never_ had that before. It’s nice; she likes it, and she’s not sure she can give it up easily.

Some part of her subconscious has taken the idea too far though. When she isn’t being terrorized by blood soaked phantoms in her dreams—Phasma and Trudgen and other masked wraiths—Kylo likes to hunt her, his pale, broad torso glistening with sweat, the planes of his face tantalizingly hidden behind a kerchief. In one of them she’s back in the library nook, waiting for him to find her. When he does, when he pulls the hidden door open to reveal her, not only is his black tunic discarded, but he climbs in with her and closes the door behind him, shutting them into the tiny space together. When she wakes from those dreams, she isn’t screaming, but her pulse thunders all the same. She’s afraid, but she’s not sure if she’s afraid of _him_.

When Kylo does arrive this morning, he’s carrying a large knapsack. It doesn’t suit him.

He’s followed her presence to the kitchen, which is lucky because most of the contents of the knapsack are food. He lets her unpack it all into the pantry space then hands her a white box, about the size of a dinner plate. She puts the box down on a table she’s repaired and opens the lid.

“Cake!”

It is. Chocolate cake, gleaming buttercream piped on top, the smell wafting up towards her nose and making her mouth water. 

“Don’t eat it all in one go.” He pauses. “I must return to the fortress now—I’ve spent too many of my days away from court training you. Any more, and Snoke will grow suspicious.”

Rey’s glad. She’s going to have a wonderful time alone with her cake, and her subconscious is in desperate need of space from Kylo.

“I suggest you take the time to get into the library and continue studying,” Kylo instructs her. “Keep repairing the windows, if you can. Don’t waste the day.”

“I won’t.” She intends to keep searching for ways out of here, of course, but this is also the ideal time to learn how to cast light. Plus, if she can figure out how to get into the library on her own, she gets more cake, and she can read whatever she wants.

Kylo has restricted her reading time to just magic books, but Rey’s seen enough shelves now to know the library covers off many more subjects. History, science, myths, and legends; arts, nature, geography, and philosophy. There’s so much for her to learn while she’s in there.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he tells her. “But if I’m not, keep working.”

The only twinge she feels is worry that his work down in the fortress is going to involve Ben, somehow. Will Ben be taken away and hurt? Will he be here tonight?

She can’t ask Kylo, because Kylo can’t know she knows about Ben. So she waits until Kylo’s presence fades from the castle, then runs all the way up to the top of the keep, the cake box clutched in her hands. She only asked for cake because Ben reminded her that she’d once liked it—he’d listed it as a possible reward, which she thinks means he probably considers it a reward too. It’s only fair to share it with him.

She leaves it in her chamber and then goes to the foot of the tower staircase. Only then does she find her laughing, a little dizzy at the idea of sharing food with somebody else. She’s _never_ done that. She’s never had enough food to share and for the first time she’s got something sweet and wonderful that she doesn’t have to fight to protect, and she’s willingly going to offer some of it to him. She doesn’t know what to make of the feeling.

Her bubble bursts a moment later anyway—because she can’t feel Ben. He’s not here.

Which means Kylo has taken him back to the fortress.

* * *

Rey works. All day, she works. 

This situation isn’t just about freeing herself now—it’s about freeing Ben too. She needs to stop thinking in the short term and consider the long term. They both need to be able to defend themselves and get to somewhere they can be safe.

The problem is, Rey doesn’t know much. Her schooling in Jakku came from the books she found as she scavenged, rather than a formal education. She’s seen maps but they were in the bellies of war engines, and the world has changed a great deal since the war which left those engines to rust in the desert. 

All the information she needs is in the library. This is about more than simple rewards—frivolous ideas like cake. Gaining free access to all that information is a reward in itself. Cake is a distraction, a luxury that stops her thinking like a scavenger, keeping her comfortable enough to stop looking for a way out of here.

Nevertheless, she takes a slice of cake—because Rey will _never_ waste food—and settles herself in front of the library door. She managed to get the one in the fortress open, but that was by copying what Kylo did. She hadn’t paid attention over the last couple of days when coming in and out of the room, too distracted by the idea of creating light.

The lock looks simple enough. The door is solid and heavy but only made of wood rather than metal, though she suspects if she tried kicking it down the damage would be to her foot, magical protection or not. There is a handle set into a brass plate, and underneath the handle there’s a hole in the plate.

She wonders why they even bothered with a normal key if the idea was to protect the library magically, but maybe not everybody who lived in the castle was able to do magic? The fact that even Kylo uses a key to enter strikes her as strange.

She closes her eyes, spooning cake into her mouth and letting the heady chocolate goo spread over her tongue as she feels for the lock with her mind. It’s got a metallic feel when she finds it, and she tries to imagine that she’s a tiny pick, able to get inside and jiggle the barrels into the correct configuration. 

When that doesn’t work, she goes looking for something she can use as an actual lock pick, a skill she’d been a dab hand at by the age of eleven. 

All that earns her is a shock of something sharp and angry when she slides the sliver of metal into the gap, knocking it out of her hand and making her yelp.

“Hey!” she yells at the door, shaking her hand like it will shift the pain away quicker.

She should have expected that to happen, really.

Temporarily defeated, Rey goes for lunch, coming back with a warmed up bit of meat pie and sitting cross-legged right in front of the lock, staring at it like she can see inside it. 

The problem is, it feels nothing like the lock in the fortress or the chamber door. Those had been a fairly simple construction, an internal bolt that slid into the frame and just needed pulling back to release the catch. This feels like a proper lock, one that needs a key, except it can’t be picked, so she’s stumped.

Has Kylo set her a challenge she can’t complete? Is that it? Does she need a key and he’s told her to try this to keep her occupied when he’s not around? Is he expecting her to sit around staring and poking at a door she’ll never be able to open without him there?

That sounds less like him and more like Phasma.

She gives up, deciding she’s going to make a torch the old fashioned way and go explore the cellars and dungeons instead. Giving off light won’t be dangerous down there because nobody will be able to see it, not like when she’s high up in the keep.

She crosses the courtyard, pausing at the fragmented window she’d put together on that first day still laid out across the stone, glittering prettily under the sun.

_Ezra slays the dragon_ , he’d called it. She can see that despite the way the glass had been shattered and not yet fused back together: a blond-haired man is driving a sword into the belly of a serpentine beast. She’s never heard of this Ezra, but she does know that dragons were supposed to live in this land hundreds of years ago, and were driven out by the people who built the castle—the ancestors of Queen Leia.

Kylo must know the story. He knows a lot about the castle—he must have had plenty of time to explore it in the years he’s been keeping the library. She wonders who he was before Snoke’s arrival. Does he have a story like Phasma? Is he from some crummy background in a horrible town, and when Snoke came along he hitched up to his wagon and never looked back?

Maybe he was a soldier or mercenary. She’s not even sure where he’s from—she’s heard accents from all over the continent while in Jakku and his doesn’t fit. It’s almost Coruscanti, but there’s a weird inflection to it that confuses her. He’s an enigma, like Snoke. Which is probably as they both intend it to be.

When she’s back in her room, she shuts the door behind her, wishing she had the key to lock it properly. Not that it would stop Kylo if he wanted to get in. 

She’s about to start running a hot bath when the pieces slot together in her mind.

The library door needs a key to open it.

Just like this room.

There must be another key somewhere. One that Kylo expects her to find. That sounds like she’s searching for a needle in a haystack—it could be anywhere in the castle. She could be searching for years. Except, he’s already shown her how to find it, hasn’t he?

Rey dashes down the stairs, across the courtyard and back up to the library. This time she shapes the lock in her mind, just like she did with the pieces of window, concentrating on how it feels and then throwing out her consciousness to the rest of the castle.

Somewhere, in another corner, something responds to her. A spark of interest, a sleeping object that’s been awoken and feels like the metal of the lock. She tugs it towards her, and waits, holding her hand out before her. 

It takes a few minutes. Wherever the key has been stashed, it’s not nearby—which makes plenty of sense, if it’s supposed to be hidden away. But soon, she feels it drawing closer, and then it comes sailing up the staircase and into her waiting hand.

She places it in the lock, turns it, and opens the door.

Maybe she does want more cake in reward after all.

* * *

By the time the sun begins to set, Rey has finished reading _The Grammar of Magic_ and taking copious notes from it. She’s also browsed around the rest of the library, noting the different sections: there are recipe collections, and gardening manuals, and books about art. Nothing appears to have been added since Snoke’s coup, but she’s found big maps that show the entire continent, as well as plans of the castle. The passageways aren’t shown on the plans, and the only other way in and out is through the big drawbridge gate over the moat that leads to the Coruscant road. That gate is in the outer courtyard, and she’d need to get outside of the keep to reach it—except it leads straight down to Snoke’s fortress.

No. She needs to find her way into those passages. One way or another.

When she returns to her room this time, she finds a note has been slipped under her door. 

_I will not be here tomorrow._

_KR_

It’s no skin off her nose. She can spend all the time in the library that she wants to without interruption.

But the note has sent her heart soaring. If Kylo has been here, does that mean he’s brought Ben back?

She’s curled up in bed with her blindfold on by sunset, napping until she hears a soft rap on the door. She rouses, half wondering if she’s dreamed it, but she can sense his soft presence on the other side.

“Ben?” she calls.

“It’s me,” he replies, and she hears the door open and close. He pads closer, but his steps are slow. Halting. He pauses, hovering as if undecided about something. She’d invited him to sit on the bed last night, but he doesn’t seem confident enough to do it again without her go ahead.

“You can sit here,” she says. “You don’t need to ask.”

“I should. I keep thinking we should meet somewhere else. This feels too—”

“Intimate?” she whispers. 

“Yes. But we can’t go anywhere else, not without risking you seeing me.”

“I don’t mind. I like you coming to see me in here.”

He sits down, making the bed dip beneath him, then makes a sound low in his throat. It reminds her of a wounded animal. And now that she’s concentrating, she can feel how his energy is different. It’s raw, with a low pulse running through it. One she doesn’t like.

“Ben—are you hurt?” she asks.

“Yes,” he replies, and it comes out as a hiss of pain.

Sometimes she asks really stupid questions.

“You’ve been in the fortress today,” she says. “Kylo took you down there, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“Snoke decided I needed to be punished,” he tells her through clenched teeth. “So I was.”

“Did they whip you?” It’s the only punishment she knows about that makes sense—if he’d been made to fight Kylo, he’d be dead, because Kylo doesn’t lose, and she can’t see how soft Ben would be capable of being aggressive in a fight against that monster.

“Yes,” he says again.

“I can help with that,” she tells him. “I have a salve you can use. And bandages.” Things Kylo had brought with them from the fortress. 

“You don’t need to share your supplies,” he assures her. “I will heal. I always heal.”

“But I think this salve helps numb the pain as well!”

“What if you need it?”

“I can ask for more—and I haven’t really needed it myself. _Please._ I can feel your pain, and I can’t sit here and ignore it.”

“Sorry,” he mutters. “I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. Where is it?”

“In the trunk in the corner. Can you make it there?”

“I can. I can move, it’s fine.”

“Top drawer.”

She can feel how stiffly he’s moving about the room, like every step takes concentration. It’s different, relying on senses other than sight. Not only her hearing, but whatever it is about her magic that lets her feel the world around her. The drawer slides open, Ben rummages, then makes his painful way back to her.

There’s a shuffle of fabric which suggests he’s taking off whatever garment he’s wearing over his torso. The pungent, herby scent of bacta fills the room when he removes the lid. All is quiet between them for a minute or two as he works, until she hears a hiss from him.

“Are you alright?” she calls out to him.

“I’m fine,” he replies, but she can hear that it comes through gritted teeth. “It’s just...difficult to reach some of the—”

His words cut off in a quiet whimper.

Of _course_. His wounds are mostly on his back. Why did she expect him to be able to reach them on his own?

“I can help,” she offers.

“No, that’s—”

“I know how to do it, I had to do it for—someone else.”

“—it’s not appropriate.”

“Nobody gets to decide that except for you and me.” She holds out a hand expectantly, waiting for him to give her the poultice. “And I can’t sit here and listen to you hurt yourself more because you refuse to accept my help.”

“What about the blindfold?”

“You’ll have to guide my hands as best you can.”

She hears his quiet intake of breath, and his soft footfalls as he creeps closer.

“How are we going to do this?” he asks. He’s closer than before, judging by his voice, but still a couple of feet away from her.

“I suppose if I sit with my back towards you, you can apply it to the wounds?” he asks.

“Yes.”

He places the pot of bacta in her outstretched hand, gently cupping hers with his own as he does so. his hand easily dwarfs hers. Everything about Ben seems large—yet gentle.

She folds her legs to give him room to sit right in front of her, and waits for him to move. He takes a deep breath, as if drawing up courage, then shifts closer. 

He’s right in front of her now. Even without the blindfold, his presence fills the space before her, casting a shadow in Rey’s space. One she welcomes. He must be large enough that he’s taller than her even sat down, and for some reason, sat between the headboard and him makes her feel shielded. Safe. Nothing can harm her in this little space.

She wishes it were true. But Ben has been harmed and she’ll do what she can to help him.

She holds the pot in her left hand and dips two fingers of her right hand into the salve, which is cool and tingly against her fingertips. Then she reaches out tentatively, searching for the skin of Ben’s back.

He gasps when she touches him, but it’s not from pain.

There’s a jolt, not unlike when she’d tried to unlock the library door with a pick, but this doesn’t hurt. It’s a pleasant tingle, one she leans into. Some weird type of magic she’ll have to look up in the library.

Then she begins to map out his back with her fingers.

She was right earlier. This is intimate. It’s not only about finding the fresh welts in his skin and smoothing the poultice over. It’s about the rest of the skin she can feel—some smooth and soft, some slightly raised—old scars and new. He keeps himself tense and silent, but she finds herself humming and offering soothing words to him.

“It’s okay. I know it stings, but it’ll help you feel better.”

He relaxes into her touch, his shoulders—and stars, they are broad—loosening and slumping as she works. She likes the way he feels under her hands, even with the skimming touches she has to use, like she’s dipping her hand into the blanket of warmth that surrounds him.

“I think I’m done,” she tells him, and she feels him shift once more, taking the pot from her and replacing the lid.

“I can do the bandages myself,” he murmurs. And he’s right, there isn’t an easy way for her to do that without sight—not while staying still—but she doesn’t want to stop touching him. She doesn’t know where this has come from, this sudden urge to feel skin under her hands. She’s not touched another person in years, not until Kylo, and though tending to his wounds had quietened the angry energy that radiates from him, it hadn’t been soothing like touching Ben. 

She gets the urge to press herself up against him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. She doesn’t because—

Well, it would hurt him. But also, she barely knows him. She knows his name, that’s all, and what he feels like to her. She knows he’s in a similar predicament as her; worse, even. There’s no way he’d be happy about her flinging herself at him and using him like a pillow.

Her cheeks heat up, burning with the wave of embarrassment that follows her silly urge.

“You should rest,” she tells him. “You’ll heal faster with more sleep.”

Is he…disappointed? She knows she is, that she doesn’t want to send him away, but it’s for the best. 

“I will. But I’ll be back.”

“Good,” she says with a smile. His weight shifts on the bed, preparing to leave, and she finds her hand reaching up to grab for him. She wants to take his wrist but can’t see where it is; instead she lets her hand fall back into her lap. “Wait! On the dresser near the door. There’s some cake for you.” She’d wrapped a slice up earlier in some paper from one of the drawers and left it for him.

“Cake?”

“Kylo brought it for me yesterday.” She smiles into the darkness. “As a reward. And I wanted to share it with you.”

“I really shouldn’t—”

“Yes, you should!”

“But it’s _yours_.”

“Exactly,” she tells him firmly. “And I want you to have some.”

“Okay,” he agrees quietly. “I will take it. Thank you.”

When he’s gone, she removes the blindfold. She still can’t see much in the room, but enough to cross to the door and lock it.

Then when she settles down in bed, she draws the drapes around it, to keep the scent of bacta and him inside. The space where he’d been sat is still warm, and she drifts off to sleep with the feel of him still ringing through her fingers.

She dreams about him too. About his back, unbroken or marred, all of his skin smooth and warm to her touch. About what it would feel like to press her palm flat against it, feel his muscles shift underneath her. The rest of him is shadowed but it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t need to see his face. She knows him anyway.

Then the dream shifts, and she’s seeing Kylo’s back. Broad and scarred, but she’s still touching it, mapping the contours of his torso with her hands. When he turns to face her with the mask in place, she knows she should pull away, turn away from him.

Instead her hands continue their journey, learning him in ways she never will in daylight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on [Tumblr](https://cellar-darlings.tumblr.com/) for a teaser of chapter twelve on September 12th!


	13. Chapter Twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not for the first time, Kylo finds himself lurching through Snoke’s fortress, trying to keep his gait even and his pace quick enough to disguise the pain he’s in. It would be foolish to show weakness with the other Guard sniffing around, still itching at the chance to exact some form of revenge for Trudgen’s defeat. Normally he’d have healed faster than this, but his latest punishment reopened the barely-healed welts that Rey inflicted at Snoke’s insistence before she left the fortress.
> 
> He’s only been gone a few days, but the cold settles back into his bones as soon as he returns, and an uneasy cloak of acrimony rests over everyone in the fortress. Everyone except Snoke, that is. He wields the tension like a weapon, feasting from it at the same time.

Not for the first time, Kylo finds himself lurching through Snoke’s fortress, trying to keep his gait even and his pace quick enough to disguise the pain he’s in. It would be foolish to show weakness with the other Guard sniffing around, still itching at the chance to exact some form of revenge for Trudgen’s defeat. Normally he’d have healed faster than this, but his latest punishment reopened the barely-healed welts that Rey inflicted at Snoke’s insistence before she left the fortress.

He’s only been gone a few days, but the cold settles back into his bones as soon as he returns, and an uneasy cloak of acrimony rests over everyone in the fortress. Everyone except Snoke, that is. He wields the tension like a weapon, feasting from it at the same time.

Today is better than yesterday. Kylo's return from Takodana—according to his cover story, at least—had been met with hostility.

Hux had waited on the steps leading up to the palace doors as Kylo rode Grimtaash through the fortress gates. Hux’s hair was especially brassy in the sickly torchlight. It distinguished him from anyone else in the complex—that and his ever-indefatigable sneer, evident against the pallor of his face, sadly not hidden behind a mask. He stood with his arms braced behind his back, legs wide, stance intending to radiate power and dominance from the higher ground he held.

Instead, Kylo recognized Hux more clearly than ever as the weak bully he was. A usurper’s right hand and a usurper in his own right, a man with no power or talent of his own, but the dangerous willingness to do whatever it took to secure his position in authority. Sadly for him, his place on the palace steps only reminded Kylo of how laughable the name was for the building they both dwelt in. Ugly and crude, built hastily for protection and to signify Snoke’s stolen power. In comparison to the castle it squats below, it is nothing: it has none of the beauty or the grace of the old palace, not even in the original’s currently ruined state.

Snoke would have destroyed the castle entirely, if he could. Instead he'd had to settle for a new seat of power, building it as close to the old one as he could. Kylo knows that still irks him—that Snoke’s new throne will forever mark him out as a usurper rather than rightful occupant.

Hux’s display of dominance had little effect on Kylo. With Grimtaash stabled, he’d crossed to the steps, intending to breeze past Hux without acknowledging him and return to his quarters.

He didn’t make it that far. “The Emperor expects to see you,” Hux commanded, glaring at Kylo down the bridge of his nose. Even as Kylo ascended the steps and drew level with him, Hux kept the same position, until he had to tip his head back to do so. A common, irritating affect of his, as if the entire court couldn’t see who was the taller of the two of them.

But he was doing his work as Snoke’s toady, and Kylo had no choice but to abandon his destination for the stifling chill of the throne room.

The Emperor was waiting—no doubt alerted by Hux, who in turn had been alerted by the watchmen of Kylo’s approach back up the Imperial Road. Snoke stopped tapping his fingers on the arm of the throne, dropping his feigned boredom for exaggerated shock at Kylo’s approach.

“Ren! How good to see you.” His face split into his closest approximation of a smile. Kylo crossed to the foot of the dais and took a knee before his master.

“My lord.”

“And here I thought you’d abandoned me for fairer pastures. No note, no goodbye—vanishing into the realm after I took your favorite toy away. Whatever was I supposed to think?”

Kylo dipped his head lower. “I was trying to fulfill my duty, my lord. I had failed you twice over—letting the girl live, allowing Kanata to slip away. I thought the best remedy would be to continue my quest to find Kanata.”

Snoke tutted. “You thought? Well, I suppose there’s a first time for everything. Hux told me you went to Takodana.”

“I did, my lord.”

“And?”

“Promising leads. I didn’t expect to find Kanata in her old home, but I have names of people she trusts and who can be bled for information.”

“Excellent. Although I suppose it’s not a coincidence that the Ematt girl also had her roots in Takodana.” Snoke’s face twists into a leer. “Were you hoping you would discover a long-lost sister you could have some fun with?”

Only years of careful schooling kept Kylo in his place, his spiking wrath turned inward rather than lashing outwards. He can’t afford to pique Snoke’s interest. “A coincidence, my lord. There is nobody of any worth in Takodana.” He’s traveled through on occasion and it’s a village on the crossroads, the rest of the town a graveyard like Coruscant’s outskirts. It survived purely because of the business the inn does with travelers. “The girl was not as…fascinating as I thought she would be, in the end.”

He had to push through the words, which lay like ash on his tongue. He hoped his hesitance sounded like careful word choice—an avoidance of true crudeness—rather than avoidance, but the only way he could propel his way through the words was to push Rey far from his mind. Like he wasn’t speaking of violating her, or pretending she was anything other than sunlight to him. 

This ability to lie so baldly is Kylo’s only advantage against Snoke. The one thing he can still do to push back against Snoke’s power over him, purely because his master never strictly forbade him from lying. Kylo is sure that Snoke never bothered to because Kylo is physically under his thumb in every other way. What does it matter to Snoke what Kylo thinks or says?

“I see.” Snoke’s eyes narrowed. “Have you proof she was effectively dispatched then?”

“Would you like to see the bloody sheets from my quarters?”

This elicited a true grin from Snoke. “Unnecessary. Tell me though—what became of her after you were done?”

Kylo shrugged. “I threw her over the walls down into the river. She didn’t seem worth the effort of burial, and there wasn’t enough meat on her to feed dogs with.”

Snoke waved a dismissive hand. “So long as the matter is resolved. Still, though—you did bring a traitor into my court.” He remained jovial even as Phasma was brought into the throne room in a wheeled chair, her mask the only remnant of her armor. It meant Kylo could not see the weakness on her face—none of them could—but the chair itself belied the fact that she wasn’t capable of walking on her own, her injuries severe enough to still be healing even after a week’s application of bacta.

Phasma carried the scourge in her hand, and Kylo understood the true purpose of his summons to the throne room.

If she was satisfied, afterwards, he was unable to tell, but he won’t begrudge her the measure of revenge. He’d forgotten, in those few sunlit days with Rey, how bloodthirsty and merciless the court really is. Phasma was able to exact an allotment of pain from him, and the Guard had lingered, hoping for their own chance to do so. The reveal of Rey’s lineage no doubt made them even more sour over the circumstances of Trudgen’s death.

It didn’t matter. At night, Kylo slipped back up to the old castle through the route he’d used to spirit Rey away there in the first place, to find her waiting with her eyes wrapped up in linen. She’d known he was in pain, even without sight, without him saying a word, and then tended to him in the intimacy of the darkness.

It was almost worth the lashings.

The memory of her fingers on his bare skin buoy him today, despite the hostilities. Creeping back to his cell and his old cot had been disorienting, waking from dreams of her fingertips skimming along his shoulder blades—but he had to show his face around court this morning. He needed to gain enough forgiveness from Snoke before departing on his next wild goose chase after Kanata.

He finds himself kneeling in the vicinity of the dais as petitioners come and go, frustrated at their continued inability to understand the futileness of begging for help from a man without a shred of mercy in his soul. A decade of Snoke’s reign, and still people believe they can plead their case for the alms they might have received from Kylo’s mother, or for clemency against the myriad corporal punishments Snoke’s laws insist upon.

“Please, your majesty—I’ve already lost one hand, to lose the other…I won’t be able to feed my children!”

Kylo doesn’t even flinch as the man loses his livelihood to Vicrul’s scythe. Instead he finds his thoughts drifting, away from the senseless suffering of the poor and broken citizens, towards the only pleasant thing in his life. Rey, of course.

His real name had been a gift to her, but in truth he feels like he’s reaping the rewards from it. Every time she says it, he lights up inside, like he’s carrying a small sun inside himself. And yet, he’s jealous as well. Jealous of Ben—of the Rey that Ben gets to experience, trusting and sweet. She smiles in the night—he can hear it in her voice, but he can’t see it, and she won’t share them in the daylight either. Not her real, unguarded smiles. While he enjoys her prickly side, the way she pushes back against his tuition and questions him at every turn, he wishes their time together during the day wasn’t so combative. But he knows—he knows if he could tell her that he is Ben, and Ben is Kylo, she would push them both away.

The day after he gave her his name, for one heartstopping moment he’d thought she’d figured out the truth. The questions she’d asked about the mask—he’d not known her line of thinking, and of course she’d stumbled onto the truth with her sharp thinking. She’d put the pieces together with only a few snippets of information, despite the questions he can’t answer for her, and started asking other questions instead. Questions like, why doesn’t Hux have to wear a mask?

Kylo can only guess, because Snoke never deigns to make explanations of his choices to those under his thumbs. The crucial difference is that Hux isn’t a warrior or a magic user, and the masks are given to those who fit both categories. Kylo suspects those two qualities mean Snoke feels the need to have a stronger form of control over Kylo, Phasma, and the Guard—they can’t use magic or violence to betray him if they’re controlled by the armor he forces them to wear. Hux needs no such curbing. 

Rey’s questions are enough to prompt Kylo to ask questions of his own, when he finds himself alone with Snoke after the audience is over and the throne room is empty once more. Hux has scurried away, quailing at the blood on the floor of the throne room, and Snoke chuckles at his retreating form.

“Why do you keep Hux around?” Kylo mutters. “He doesn’t have the stomach for the work.”

“His father was a loyal follower of mine. I couldn’t have won the throne without him.”

“And yet, Hux killed his father. Surely that deserved punishment, not reward.”

“He delivered a good death. That’s always worth a reward.”

Of course Snoke enjoyed even the death of a loyal follower—it fed him, like all destruction.

“If the deliverer has any useful qualities,” Kylo pushes back. “After all these years, I still fail to find any in Hux.”

“He follows orders well, without being forced to do so. He’s eager to do my bidding, especially the crueler instructions.”

Which is hardly rare in Snoke’s court. That applies to every last member of the Guard.

“You know he intends to kill you one day,” Kylo comments.

“Naturally. It’ll be delightful to watch him try, and I’ll be sad to have him put down when he fails. But that won’t be for some time yet. Shall I tell you a secret?” Snoke leans in closer, over the arm of his throne, and Kylo steels everything inside himself not to lean away from the brush of his dry, acrid aura. “I give him just enough misery to inflict and it keeps him sated. If I ever suspect he’s growing bored enough to really contemplate a plot against me, I throw him a nice torture scheme to implement. It keeps him distracted for a little while. Entertaining pets really is a matter of attending to their needs—making sure they have plenty of exercise and amusement. One always outlives them, but they can bring such joy in their short lives.”

Kylo’s lungs fill with ice at Snoke’s callous words—not because of his perception of Hux, but because he’s afraid Snoke has determined his secret. Surely he can’t be referring to Rey as a pet that Kylo is toying with?

He doesn’t respond, barely daring to breathe, waiting for Snoke to continue.

When he does, it’s not what Kylo expects.

“Sometimes I worry that I’ve deprived you of too much. For your own good on occasion—always for my good, of course—but it was clear your heart wasn’t in your duties. Not until you dragged the urchin back here.”

_ What… _

“Now I understand,” Snoke continues. “You needed your own kind of fun. I can’t permit you to go bringing her kind back to the fortress, but if you find a powerless Resistance member who you’d like to toy with a little, I won’t reprimand you. I won’t even make you share her with Hux.”

The smile on his face makes Kylo want to throw up. He retreats inside his mind, to where Rey’s touch is waiting to calm him—where the tiny flicker of her light is cradled into the center of his soul. He breathes on it, trying to stoke it so it is brighter, warmer as Snoke’s oily shadow surrounds him. And when he is certain he can speak evenly, only then does he reply.

“That will not be necessary. My needs are being met.”

Snoke shrugs. “Suit yourself. But if you start getting morose again, I might have to insist.”

Kylo’s lingering wounds mean he can’t flee from Snoke when the conversation ends, which is a strange, twisted blessing; his master would only take it as an insult and inflict more punishment. But Kylo’s legs carry him away as quickly as they are able in light of pain and manners, and he reaches his cell with a relief he rarely feels upon seeing it.

He never thought that being in the presence of the inhabitants of this place could feel worse, but time spent in Rey’s bright company only casts them all in further shade.

With the door firmly closed behind him, he retrieves Rey’s gift to him from the drawer he stashed it in, carefully depositing it on top of his sheets before removing his mask.

The cake will be stale by now, but she insisted on sharing it with him. He won’t waste it. 

He has to use his fingers to eat, which is messier than he likes but worth it. The cake is the sweetest thing he’s eaten in years, his self-enforced asceticism not lending itself to indulgences like this. The texture is dry, the buttercream not as rich with cocoa as he remembers from his youth, but Dasha Tekka did her best at short notice and he can hardly complain. Rey hadn’t, and this is her gift to him.

He wonders what else he can do to reward the Tekkas, other than more coin. Not just for their silence, but for the food and hospitality they show him every time he traipses through their stables. They have no reason to—even allegiance to his mother ought to stand them in opposition to him—but Lor San has that annoying ability to know everything without Kylo saying a word. Or at least he pretends to. And Dasha hadn’t asked any questions when he asked for the cake, but her smile was a frustrating echo of her father’s own knowing grin.

“Would you like me to tie the box up in a bow?” she’d asked when he arrived to collect it. 

“Why would I want you to do that?”

“To make it look pretty. She’ll appreciate it more that way.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Dasha rolled her eyes. “I know there’s somebody else up in that castle with you—you’re taking food for two.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s a ‘she’.”

Dasha had smiled that smile, like she was being extraordinarily patient with him. “Maybe it’s a he. But you aren’t asking me to get you cake for a prisoner. Men only give cake to people they want to court. Cake and flowers and jewelry— it’s what my Brance gave to me.”

He hadn’t said another word to her.

With the cake gone, he licks his finger and thumb clean, throwing the paper into the fireplace he has lit for once. As it crisps up and catches fire, he contemplates all the ways he can make his way into the castle without being detected.

But he also finds himself wondering where the line falls between how Snoke treats Hux, and his captivity of Rey. Is he doing enough for her, or is he really no better than the man who calls himself his master?

* * *

Kylo sets off from the fortress before dawn, despite only receiving a few hours of sleep after returning from another night with Rey. They hadn’t spoken about much of anything last night; she’d inquired after his wounds, which were healing well, then insisted on applying another layer of poultice. They’d been silent once more during the process, him closing his eyes to absorb every gentle stroke of her fingers. Her skin is calloused, but he doesn’t mind it at all, and she is exceedingly gentle with him. More gentle than he can ever remember anyone treating him, even his mother.

With the wounds redressed, they’d both been reluctant to break the silence between them. Kylo, for his part, was afraid that he was misinterpreting the heavy tension between them, Dasha’s words playing on his mind. He knows he wants Rey, but he has no idea how she feels about Ben. She likes his company—but is that because she is glad to have any company at all? And her new silence was unnerving—what if he’d done something to upset her and was oblivious to what he’d done?

He has official leave from Snoke to spend some time in Utapau hunting the Resistance, meaning he won’t need to return to court for several days. He leaves Grimtaash with the Tekkas, glad that this early in the day he only has to deal with the youth Ilco to handle the mount. 

As he descends the stairs into the shed where the portal is hidden, something brushes against his ankle and he kicks out instinctively. His foot doesn’t collide with anything, and he hears nothing more—this cellar is probably brimming with rats.

He emerges through a portal at the rear of the kitchens, rather than his usual entrance in the dungeons.

Rey is at the stove and yelps at the sight of him, dropping the knife she is holding. It spirals towards her foot, and Kylo freezes it before it hits, shoving it out of the way.

Just before the bricks close up to seal the passageway off once more, the darkness spits something out. A small, furry body of cream and orange, which ricochets past Rey, and out into the courtyard, hissing and yowling.

Rey gapes after it. “Was that a cat?”

“Apparently so.”

“Why did you bring a cat?” 

“I didn’t. It’s a stowaway.” He’s trying to pretend to be nonchalant, like he wasn’t completely unaware that a cat had followed him all the way through the tunnels. He has to try and maintain a competent front before Rey.

He hands her the bushel of apples he’s been carrying on his back, and notes her narrowed eyes at his hesitant movements. She’d mentioned liking fruit a few nights before, so he’d taken them from the fortress’ supply rather than asking the Tekkas for their own.

When she glances inside the sack, her face lights up. “Are all of these for me?”

He has to look away from her, the delight shining from her face too much for him to look at, especially after a few days in the fortress. “It would do me no good not to keep you well nourished while training you.”

The smile drops away again. “I’ll go put these in the pantry.”

Kylo watches her stalk away and mentally berates himself. Why is he incapable of being nice to her? Why does he feel the need to act like a curmudgeon during the few occasions when she is not being cold towards him?

The cat is sniffing at the base of the fruit tree when they emerge, and skitters away into the empty workshops with a yowl when it catches sight of them. No doubt the feral descendant of a household pet, living off the local rodent population. It might find the lower levels of the castle to be fertile hunting ground.

Rey is wary, on guard. “Are we sparring this morning?”

“No.” Stars, no. His back is not ready for that. “Things have been fractious at the fortress over the last few days—especially violent.” He notices her eyes widen, and her gaze tracking almost imperceptibly towards his shoulders. “I would rather we focus on calmer activities for today, at least.”

She frowns. “What does that mean? You’ve barely been here, and now you want us to shut ourselves up in the library?”

“I had hoped you’d been practicing what I’ve taught you in my absence—since the library was not accessible to you.”

“Is that so?” She slips a hand into her tunic pocket, a smug smile tugging at her lips. “What makes you so sure?”

When she slips her hand out and unfurls it, there’s a key nestled inside. The spare library key.

It had taken him years to figure that one out.

He’s genuinely astonished, unable to answer her for a moment. And when he does, for once his mouth says what his heart feels. 

“Well done.”

She blinks at him, and the smirk melts, unfurling into something softer and more awed.

“You mean that?”

“I do. That you understood you needed a key and managed to call it to you is impressive after so little training.”

“Thank you.” She tucks the key safely away again. “I don’t think I completely understand though. Why a key? I thought the library was protected with magic?”

“It is. There are only two keys, and they were forged centuries ago by master sorcerers. They ensured that no other means will allow someone to enter the library—the locks cannot be picked either mechanically or magically, the doors cannot be broken or forced open, there are no ways of opening the entrance without one of these.”

“But surely anybody could stumble across this?”

“No. It is hidden where humans cannot reach, so only a magic user may get hold of it, by calling it to them. Very few magic users ever apply the basic principle of attraction—the lock and the key call to each other, because they are two halves of a whole. Those who don’t understand that don’t know how to seek the key. And of those who do, it only responds to the ones who don’t seek to harm the library or the knowledge it contains within.”

“So I can go in whenever I please now?”

“If the key permits you to, yes.”

“And I get to claim a reward for it?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Also—since I’ve been reading while you were away, surely that means we can spar now?”

“No.”

“That’s what I want as my reward!”

“Your reward for this is not of your choosing.”

“Surely I should get something for doing it so fast?”

He considers this for a moment. “You may choose today’s topic.”

“Deal.”

* * *

He expects her to ask him to teach him about light, so he’s surprised when she insists on working with the windows again. It turns out she has been practicing in his absence, and there are three more laid out waiting in the old throne room.

“It rained yesterday so I wanted to work inside,” she tells him. It makes sense, even if he’d have rather she picked anywhere else in the castle except his family’s throne room.

What he notices is that she’s actually spent some time clearing the space out, the layer of dust and cobwebs swept away—and he doesn’t think she used a broom to do it. The glass has been collected in one big pile, except for the three windows she’s pieced together.

“Do one more,” he instructs. “Show me how fast you are now.”

In under a minute, she has  _ Ahsoka defeats the rathtar _ assembled at her feet.

He’d expected her to progress quickly, but even he is blown away by how naturally she picks everything up. “Good,” he tells her quietly. “Keep practicing and it will all start to feel like second nature.”

Inside, he’s in turmoil. If she keeps progressing as she has been, he’ll soon need to hold himself to his decision to let her go when she’s ready. Then he’ll learn whether he really is as bad as Snoke, or if he releases her to his mother’s care.

Rey senses none of this. “Can you show me how to properly put the windows back together now?”

Despite her excellent progress, he hesitates. “I’m not sure—”

“You said I could choose. I want to do this.”

He stares down at the determined grimace of Ahsoka, sword aloft, her head wrapped in the striped headpiece of her sect. “You must pay close attention to my instructions, and stop as soon as I tell you. I won’t have you risking injury to yourself—or to me.”

She grumbles something under her breath, but he doesn’t ask her to repeat it. “I’ll do what you say,” she tells him out loud.

“Good. Now close your eyes and hone in on what I’m doing with my magic.”

She does so, waiting obediently as he reaches down between two shards of glass with his magic and starts to melt them together. It’s a delicate process, and he lets the glass guide him, just as he would when matching the pieces together. When the two parts feel whole in his mind, he opens his eyes to check visually: they are smooth, as if they were never shattered apart.

“You can look,” he tells Rey.

She cracks one eye open and glances warily downward. “Hmm. Looks the same to me.”

“I didn’t do the entire window.”

“Oh.”

“Nor will I. It’s more important that you understand the process and build up to it. What did it feel like?”

Her eyebrows knit together momentarily. “It felt like you were pushing magic into the glass. But you let the glass guide you, I think.”

“Exactly. That’s why these shattered windows are good to work with—we’re repairing them, rather than forcing unnatural changes as we want them to be. Once you’ve mastered this, other forms of energy transfer will be much easier.”

“And the energy is the magic you push in to guide the change?”

“Yes. That’s why we’re going to work on a little at a time, so you don’t use too much and injure yourself.”

She nods, but he can see she has other questions she wants to ask. “Once I’ve learned how to do this, I know the two types of magic you told me about. So I’ll be able to do most things?”

“Yes. From here it will be a matter of practice and skill.”

“Okay. Where does all the mind stuff fall into this?”

“Mind stuff?”

“You know. Mental armor. How people feel. Curses and the like—I know they’re real, I’ve heard the story of Count Dooku.”

“Have you now.” He clears his throat. “Those are extremely subtle forms of magic, but the theorists attribute those to energy manipulation as well. Albeit a very esoteric form of it, one practitioners have applied for centuries without really understanding it. There are plenty of books in the library where people wrestle with those questions if you want to read their thoughts.”

“Have you read them?”

“Some of them. I can’t say I’ve read every book in the library—I’ve never had the time. Here’s a challenge for you: find something in there that I don’t know.”

“And then what?”

“And then you’ve taught me something.”

She  _ hmmphs _ in discontent. “Sounds to me like the kind of thing I should get a reward for. If I do manage to teach you something, what do I get for it?”

Ah. He’s already promised her a gift, the only thing he has to offer that he thinks she’ll like. Other than her freedom.

“What would you like—apart from being set free?”

She purses her lips as she considers it. “Not sure yet. I’ll think about it.”

* * *

Lessons over, he leaves to retrieve food from the Tekkas, and check on Grimtaash. Dasha asks Kylo if he would like another cake, and he doesn’t even grace that with a response.

When he returns, Rey is curled up in the courtyard, sat down cross-legged with her hand stretched out in front of her. There is something in her hand, which rests palm up—some oats? On the edge of the courtyard, the cat sits with its gaze pinned on Rey, glancing longingly at the food, its tail swishing against the ground. It wants the food, but it doesn’t trust Rey.

Which means the creature is clearly senseless. If Rey were patiently trying to lure Kylo to him—she wouldn’t need to use anything. Certainly not food. He’d go to her in a heartbeat.

When Rey gives up on trying to tempt the cat, Kylo leads her up towards the library for more theory. The more she understands about manipulating energy, the better prepared for it she’ll be. At dusk, he feigns his leave.

He wants to go to Rey, but first he has a task to complete. It takes him down below the castle, though not into the royal passageways. Instead, he descends into the dungeons, taking a torch with him to light the way. He could cast another light, but as he’s warned Rey, doing too much of that takes its toll. Since he’s still healing, he’d rather let his body focus on stitching itself back together. He should use mundane means for other tasks where he can.

The dungeons feel stale and cold. They’d not been used in his mother’s reign, after his grandfather’s excessive use of them, and for that Kylo is thankful. If they’d housed any prisoners when Snoke invaded, the poor sods would have been left down here to rot away—and Kylo would be making his way through their remains right now. Instead, the spaces have been well colonized by spiders and rodents, who all shirk away from the light as he makes his way deeper into the belly of the castle hill.

The tunnels down here are rough hewn from the bedrock, many of them as old as the castle itself. It isn’t the dungeons he seeks, but something buried even further down than them. A secret place Snoke knows about—accessible to magic users who don’t have royal blood. Its protection lies in the simple illusion cloaking the door and making it appear like part of the stone, easy to pass by unless you know it’s there or you catch a hint of the magic fueling the illusion.

It’s only a room, really, sealed behind a door that has no key. Its mechanism is similar to the door to Kylo’s cell in the fortress, only older and with an added layer of rust. That is no match for his powers, and he easily flips it open, stepping inside the room and setting his torch gingerly in the wall bracket. It creaks but does not topple down, leaving Kylo with his hands free.

He hasn’t been in this room for years, but it is free of the spiderwebs and rat detritus that decorate the rest of the dungeons. The magical seal made sure of that. 

He’s quite sure Rey hasn’t made it this far in her exploration of the castle, if only because she hasn’t yet learned how to create light, and it isn’t possible to navigate this part of the complex without it. But even if she does, flipping the latch to let herself inside, he expects her to be disappointed. This is no secret escape route; only a collection of dusty furniture and belongings, boxed up or shrouded underneath sheets. Kylo is thankful for the sheets, because it means he doesn’t have to look at these items. Things he hasn’t seen in years—things he’s been denied, through his own stupid decisions.

Some of it Snoke insisted be put down here in the dungeons when it couldn’t be destroyed or controlled. Some of it, Kylo carried down here himself, so he wouldn’t be reminded of what he’d lost when he came to the castle.

Some of the items have been here since before Snoke ever came to the castle. It’s the reason for the room’s existence in the first place.

That initial collection has been shoved into one corner. The items should have been kept in the armory or the treasury after they were no longer housed in the royal chambers, but they were viewed as tainted by so many. Keeping them out of sight—burying them this far down—was deemed the better solution. 

It’s all in boxes, and what Kylo seeks is obviously identifiable, so he doesn’t need to go opening the boxes and rifling through the contents. He’s glad. He’s seen what’s inside them, was shown as a child by his mother who explained why they were locked down here. She’d been trying to explain his duties and also a connection to his grandfather, the man she’d watched wreak terror on his own kingdom.

As she’d shown him the crown, the scepter, the rings and brooches, she’d done nothing but terrify a young Ben. He’d sensed the dark, twisted magic which had seeped into the metal and stones over the years his grandfather had worn them, and the thought of touching them—of wearing them himself—had given him nightmares for weeks afterwards. Anakin’s magic wasn’t like Snoke’s—a consuming, festering blight. Instead Anakin’s lingering presence was an infection, attempting to spread out from its confines.

Worst was the obsidian casket which Anakin’s mask lies within. Even now, even lined with lead, it pulses with corrupted magic, and Kylo doesn’t open it. He doesn’t need to. The image of what lies within is seared into his memory.

The only thing which hadn’t felt tainted like that was the item Kylo seeks now. It is in a long, thin box which he flips open to check inside, wiping the dust away before he does so.

Nestled in icy blue satin is Anakin’s sword.

He still feels none of his grandfather’s presence lingering on the blade. From what he understands, Anakin stopped using the sword before his descent into depravity, by which point he’d turned to magic as his only weapon. That’s why Kylo has no qualms about passing it onto Rey.

She needs a sword. This one is a good size for her, and is responsible for none of the crimes Anakin committed. This will be a fitting reward for her.

He shuts the case, lifting it with one hand and retrieving the torch with the other, leaving the room without another glance at the secrets it contains.

* * *

He leaves the sword in his tower room, unsure of exactly when to present Rey with it. She seems to have forgotten about her reward for now; he’d like to surprise her with it, if he can.

She waits for him, as she always does now, with her gauze wrapped securely around her eyes, wound three times. He’d worry that the fabric is too thin, that it’s a ruse to try and see him, except he feels not a flicker of pain in her presence. And he’s past the point of trying to refuse himself her company, not when she is open and sweet with him at night. 

When he comes down from the tower room, he almost trips over something in the darkness—a quiet, indignant wail alerts him to the presence of the cat, which seems to have been lurking outside of Rey’s door. 

“Realized your foolishness and come for some company, hmm?” he mutters to the cat, but it’s already bolted away.

His night vision is improving the more time he spends with Rey. It helps him navigate the room towards the bed without fear of tripping over anything—like his own feet—and where she is waiting with a slight smile on her face. 

“There was a cat waiting for you outside,” he tells her while he settles himself down on the bed. 

Her smile deepens. “Kylo brought it here. Accidentally. I’ve been trying to pet it, but it won’t let me get close.”

“It’s probably feral.”

“Maybe. I think I can win it over. With patience.”

“I’m sure you can. The fact that it was looking for you suggests maybe you already did. I can hardly blame it.”

There’s just enough light for him to discern the blush that spreads across her cheeks, the delighted way her teeth dig into her lower lip as she tries to suppress a bashful smile. 

“It probably just wants food,” she replies.

“I wouldn’t be so sure. You can be very enticing.”

This time her mouth falls into a round little  _ o _ , and she doesn’t say a word. He feels his own cheeks heating up—what has come over him to say something so forward?—and hurries to change the subject. 

“Did you have a productive day?” he asks. “Did you win any more treats from Kylo?”

“Only one. It’s a reward for getting into the library, but he’s choosing this one, and I don’t know what it is.”

“I’m sure you’ll find out soon.”

“It doesn’t matter—being able to access the library on my own is more important. Now I can come and go as much as I please, and that means I can read things without him knowing. I can look for ways out of the castle.”

Much as this should worry Kylo, it doesn’t. He’s not read every single book in the library in his own quest for information—he’s fairly certain the texts on horticulture and old Naboo dialects won’t serve him much use—but he knows many of the castle’s secrets have never been committed to paper. She already knows the royal tunnels exist but she won’t find maps of them or instructions on how to enter them. And if she comes up with more adventurous ways of getting out of the castle, he can coax her to reveal her plans to him at night and dissuade her.

“I’m sure there’s a lot of useful information in there,” he replies tactfully.

“I’ve been thinking more on that, actually. About what we’ll do when we leave the castle, and your little problem.”

She gestures vaguely in the direction of his face at that last part.

“You’re so determined to take me with you then?” he asks, trying to make it light and teasing, but instead his heart is beating a frantic tattoo. She cares so deeply about Ben that she’s willing to change her own escape plans to protect him, and he can’t remember anyone ever caring that much about him. Not even his mother.

“Of course! I promised you, didn’t I? Besides what kind of person would I be if I left you behind when I know that you’re being hurt by them?” She frowns and flexes her hand, and he wonders if she’s remembering the feel of his skin under her fingertips, the way he remembers how it had felt to have her touch him.

“I’ve survived this long,” he murmurs. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“Tough, because I do.” She lifts her chin. “But I had an idea for when we leave. I know you can’t show your face, but what if we could hide your face?”

His pulse chills. “What do you mean?”

“I could make a mask for you. There’s plenty of silk and other fabric in the trunks in this room—I’m not a great seamstress, but I can sew a little.”

“No.”

He says the word too quickly, too roughly, and he watches her shrink back.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters. “I—I don’t like masks.”

“But this might—”

“Please. Not that.”

It’s irrelevant anyway. When she leaves the castle—when he has taught her as much as he can, and sent her off to her freedom—he won’t be going with her, not even as Ben. But that she is offering him a mask when all he wants is to be free of the one he already wears—she means well, he knows, but he can’t swap one for another. Not even going from the metal enclosure of the current mask to whatever silk Rey can fashion. How can he even explain it to her?

Yet, she is waiting for an explanation, her lower lip caught beneath her teeth once more, and though he can’t see her brows underneath the gauze, he has no doubt they’re furrowed together.

“It’s more than not liking masks,” he says. “They terrify me. They have ever since I was a child.”

He wishes he could tell her about Anakin. He’s not sure if that story is prohibited by the curse, but even if it isn’t, to talk about his grandfather is to reveal his title as crown prince. She doesn’t seem to have figured that out yet, and he’s not ready to let her know, if he ever does. Surely she will treat Ben differently if she knows that about him, rather than seeing him as a fellow prisoner, an equal. He spent his entire life isolated away with no siblings, no friends, no real peers, and it’s been refreshing to have somebody treating him like he isn’t so different.

And he’s not so sure he can conjure up the words to even talk about Anakin and the nightmares that his mask inflicted on himself at such a young age. Kylo isn’t sure what his mother had been thinking, showing it to him, when he wasn’t yet old enough to process the message she’d been trying to teach. All he’d taken away from their visit to the dungeon room was the sight of Anakin’s iron mask, and the fear of being trapped inside it, unable to properly see or breathe. 

Night after night for months he’d woken up screaming and drenched in sweat, feeling the coils of Anakin’s twisted magic wrapped around his head like the iron bars of the mask, and had to be soothed back to sleep by his nursemaid. At first his mother had come, but the nightmares had become too disruptive, too constant for the queen, and she’d passed the task over to someone else.

That only made things worse—Ben once again felt like he was too much, and if he kept needing his mother so much, would she want to do what they’d done to Anakin’s things? The dreams had twisted to reflect his fears after that, so not only had he been smothered and encaged by Anakin’s magic, but he’d been locked down in that dungeon room by his parents, too dangerous to be allowed to roam the world above, another one of the cursed, warped objects Anakin had ruined.

“I can’t say I blame you,” Rey says sympathetically. “I don’t think being trapped in one of the things Snoke has his people wear looks like a lot of fun. Kylo suggested I’d get one if I pleased Snoke enough, but I would never willingly put it on. As for Kylo—if he thinks that one day he can persuade me to wear a mask and serve him instead, he’s in for a rude awakening.”

“I’m sure that’s not what Kylo has planned for you,” he reassures her. And it’s the truth—he was a fool for ever considering that Rey should try to earn a mask and a place in Snoke’s court, and nothing could entice him to try and cover her face up now that he knows it so well. 

“He’d better hope not. But if you don’t want to wear a mask, then I guess I’ll just have to find another solution.” 

“You don’t need to—”

“I do, and I will.”

He makes no further attempt to dissuade Rey—the tilt of her chin makes it clear she won’t be moved from her path, and he doesn’t have the heart to argue against her when it’s out of concern for him. Instead, they spend the rest of the night talking about other things: her lessons, the improvements she’s making to the castle, and how she liked the tools she’d scavenged from the workshops.

When he returns to the tower room before dawn, his own mask sits in its place on top of the chest, staring silently back at him. It’s not as menacing as Anakin’s was, more skilfully wrought, but that makes little difference to the small boy who’d had nightmares about being stuck inside one for all those years.

Every time they’d quietened off, young Ben able to sleep more soundly, something would set them off again. His parents had despaired that he’d ever sleep through the night—though perhaps not quite as much as the nursemaid whose own sleep was interrupted by his terrors. Years later, Kylo had come to learn Snoke had picked through his nighttime fears and fashioned them into a permanent trap.

Kylo doesn’t throw the mask at the wall today. It would do no good. But he does come to rest before it, speaking to it as if he can speak to Snoke himself.

“One day,” he says, “one day, I’ll be free of you. Just you wait.”


	14. Chapter Thirteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are you encouraging the cat?” Kylo asks her when he reaches the bureau.
> 
> “To do what?” She smacks her book shut. “You brought it here.”
> 
> “Not on purpose.” His head tilts as he examines the cover of the book. “That’s not what I asked you to read.”
> 
> “I finished the other book,” she tells him. “This was the next one on the shelf.”
> 
> “Hmm.”
> 
> “I can’t just sit around waiting for you to turn up with nothing to do. It’s not like I’m supposed to practice on my own—not even to do something as simple as this.”
> 
> With a flick of her wrist, she floats a quill up from the top of the bureau until it’s hovering an inch from Kylo’s mask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the delay! Life is hectic right now, although I promise you this chapter is worth it. You'll understand why by the end ;).
> 
> Because of this, the next chapter might also be slightly delayed, so instead of being posted on 17th October, it might be the 24th instead. Just to give me sufficient time to finish it and then get back into a proper two week routine. But if I have the time I'll absolutely try to get it done for the 17th.
> 
> Onwards!

Rey glares down at the shredded material in her hands like it’s offended her. All her work, wasted, and now she doesn’t even have Kylo’s cowl to use in other ways anymore.

It’s her own fault. She'd gotten ahead of herself—instead of running her plan by Ben, she'd started cutting the cowl up to try and turn it into a mask for him. She’d been carried along by her bubble of inspiration, only to have it burst last night when Ben gently told her he didn’t want to wear a mask.

She hadn’t intended to make him a big monstrosity like the things Kylo or Phasma wore. It only needed to be something that could shield the majority of his face from her eyes—something like Kylo had worn that time she nearly escaped, when he'd covered most of his face with a kerchief. That had worked for him, which is why she’d reasoned something similar would be suitable for Ben, and merrily started slicing up the cowl to sew into shape.

She could have used other material, but when she’d checked the trunks, none of it had seemed right. None of it was musty or moth-ridden—and how that worked when the place had been abandoned for so long, she wasn’t sure, though she suspected magic—but it didn’t smell right. Kylo’s cowl, on the other hand, seemed perfect.

Now she can’t make a mask for Ben with it, and there’s a big hole in the center of the fabric, so she can’t really use it to wrap herself up to sleep in either. 

What a waste.

Her frustration carries her through breakfast, and she’s pretty sure her mood is sensed by the cat, which makes wary circuits of the courtyard but comes nowhere near her even when she breaks into a meat pie and scoops out the insides for it. She’d been making progress, she’s sure of it—not only had Ben said it was lurking outside her door last night, but she’d found several times that it would linger outside rooms she was inside, only to bolt away when she came out of them.

She doesn’t think it’s feral, or it wouldn’t be doing any of that. There had been feral cats in Jakku and they did everything they could to avoid the residents of Niima, puffing themselves up and hissing if anyone got too close, never mind sniffing around after food. There’d been stiff competition between the feral colony and the residents of the town for rat meat. This cat is wary of her, but not in the same way, so maybe it’s a stray. An abandoned pet, perhaps, or a creature kept around to keep the rodent population of an area under control. 

Well, it had been foolish enough to follow Kylo through the passages, so unless it’s wise enough to follow him back out, it’s stuck here. Not that Rey minds. She always wanted a pet—the closest she’d ever gotten was a piece of stuffed fabric—and it’s nice to know there’s some kind of company in the castle while Kylo is away. 

Although, its arrival has thrown up some questions. Since it's unlikely a stray would have survived in the fortress, and she'd never seen any evidence of a cat while she was there, that means it hadn't followed Kylo through the passage to the castle he'd brought Rey in. Which means the tunnels must go to other places too, and Kylo isn’t always coming to her directly from the fortress. 

It’s great to have that confirmed—and makes sense if there are multiple ways in and out within the castle—but also a concern. How will she find her way through the tunnels if there are multiple paths, and how will she know where she is going to exit? She doesn’t want to end up back in the fortress, nor does she want to emerge somewhere that has people around who will stop her from escaping.

But that’s a worry for the future. She still hasn’t even managed to create light to go and explore the dungeons, let alone find her way into the tunnels.

That’s her priority, then. She needs to get used to manipulating energy in the way Kylo showed her yesterday, and when she’s confident she isn’t going to do any injury to herself, then she can go below ground and practice making light. Because she’s fairly certain that isn’t something Kylo ever intends to show her; she doesn’t need it within the bounds of the castle, nor is she supposed to use it at all.

Instead of waiting for him, she takes herself up to the library, leaving the door ajar to allow the cat to follow her inside if it wants to. Then she goes to find the book she’d started reading the day before, hoping that if she shows eagerness to read when Kylo isn’t here, he’ll focus on practical lessons when he is.

She’s got her nose an inch from the page, trying to picture the technique she’s reading about in her head, when she hears heavy footsteps on the staircase outside, the familiar cadence of Kylo’s boots. She peers around the side of the book. With the door propped open, she can see him rising up the stairs, his mask appearing before the rest of him. He’s moving heavily, before he knows she can see him, more slowly and cautiously than normal. It makes her wonder—

She knows Snoke punishes them when they make errors, and she knows Ben has been whipped recently in punishment. Ben is Kylo’s charge, and the way Kylo is being so careful in his movements suggests that he too is in pain. Did Snoke decide that whatever Ben did that led to his whipping, was Kylo’s fault as well? Does Kylo get punished every time Ben does, if he is seen as responsible for Ben?

He has to be. The one time Kylo had failed with Rey, Snoke had leaped at the chance to hurt him for it. Snoke would never pass up a chance to cause unnecessary pain. The thought of that makes Rey flinch—from the memory of the switch in her hand, and from the epiphany that Kylo might not be any safer from Snoke than she or Ben are.

As soon as he realizes the door is propped open, his stature changes, straightening up, and he begins moving like his normal lumbering self. He has no idea Rey could see him, since she’s hidden back behind her book, and it doesn’t take much for her to figure out that he’s refusing to show vulnerability around her. The mask on his face is only one of the ways he hides from her.

When he reaches the door, he pauses, and even through the mask she can sense his disapproval. But he’s never told her that the door has to be kept shut, and she’s in here to protect the library if anything were to happen—not that it seems likely, since who else comes to the castle? Besides, she has a feeling that if the library didn’t want its door open, it wouldn’t be propped open. But mostly Rey is amused that she can tell what face Kylo is pulling underneath the mask—exasperation—even if she can’t see it and has no idea what his face really looks like.

The pause also seems to be because the cat is sprawled across the threshold, and to get past, Kylo will need to step over it. He hesitates, then lifts a boot—and the cat shifts faster possibly than anything Rey has ever seen a living thing move in her life, disappearing between Kylo’s legs and back down the stairs with a disgruntled whine.

She bites the inside of her cheek to stop herself from laughing, and tries to carefully school her features into obedience as Kylo stomps his way down the library. For some reason, the way he’s refusing to show even a hint of vulnerability annoys her—frustration souring her mood. Yes he’s been punished, but so was Ben, and Kylo’s responsible for that. She doesn’t know why Ben got punished but if Kylo just left him here in the castle, instead of taking him back to the fortress, then Ben wouldn’t be exposed to Snoke’s capricious moods and he’d be safe from harm.

“Are you encouraging the cat?” Kylo asks her when he reaches the bureau.

“To do what?” She smacks her book shut. “You brought it here.”

“Not on purpose.” His head tilts as he examines the cover of the book. “That’s not what I asked you to read.”

“I finished the other book,” she tells him. “This was the next one on the shelf.”

“Hmm.”

“I can’t just sit around waiting for you to turn up with nothing to do. It’s not like I’m supposed to practice on my own—not even to do something as simple as _this_.”

With a flick of her wrist, she floats a quill up from the top of the bureau until it’s hovering an inch from Kylo’s mask.

He snatches it out of the air before she can even muster a smug smile. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what? Use magic? I thought that’s what you wanted me to do.”

“You completely skipped over several steps of learning. Did you master all the exercises from the book before you tried lifting something with your mind?”

“No, but they all made sense to me. I didn’t see the harm in trying—”

Another book slams onto the bureau, kicking up a little cloud of dust. He’s yanked it from the shelves without moving. “That’s today’s reading,” he says, in a tone that brooks absolutely no argument.

The trouble there is that when he says things in that tone, it always makes Rey want to argue. “I thought we were sparring, or going out to practice more on the glass?” Of course, now she knows why he doesn’t want to fight. It would hurt him—but why should she care about that? It will barely give her an advantage over him.

“Apparently you need a different lesson today.”

“But—”

“We aren’t moving until you’ve learned it.”

She scowls at him, but grabs for the new book and flips the cover open hard enough that it slaps against the bureau. The faster she reads this, the sooner they can get back to a real lesson.

“ _Fine._ ”

* * *

Her belly is rumbling and her foot is numb from where she’s had it tucked underneath herself. She’s sure it’s time for a meal, but she refuses to stop until she’d finished reading this blasted book, even if the text is minuscule and the topic dry as a bone. She’s read the same paragraph three times before giving up and skipping to an entirely new chapter.

‘ _ Safe and proper magic use _ ’.

Rey swears there are tiny little pies dancing around the title. She blinks them away, moves her foot to get some blood flow back into it, and settles back to skim this last part of the book as fast as she can so they don’t waste the afternoon.

A few minutes later, she sits up straight, her attention caught and held by what she’s just read. Rey rereads the passage several times before it sinks in properly, the implications unraveling in her head. “This is Snoke,” she murmurs to herself.

But of course, Kylo’s excellent hearing picks up that she’s said something. “What’s Snoke?”

She hesitates, unsure if she should explain. She has no doubt that Kylo already knows about Snoke’s problem, but will he want to know that she’s figured it out? Is it dangerous for her to know, or will Kylo be happy that she’s unlocked another secret? Sometimes it’s hard to tell, despite his apparent antipathy towards his master.

But Kylo’s attention is on her now, and it won’t be removed unless she’s satisfied his curiosity or proved her understanding.

“This section of the book,” she says. “It talks about the effects of mishandling energy, like you warned me about.”

He gives a short nod. “I have you reading it to make sure you are fully aware of all the dangers and implications of making a mistake with that strand of magic.”

“I know. This part here—” 

She returns her gaze to the page and reads it aloud to him.

_ “Usually the mage’s body will intervene and prevent permanent damage, if the magic involved is beyond their capabilities or current resources. But some mages have pushed beyond their limits, and where death has not claimed them instantly, they have been left gravely disfigured and as good as dead. The destruction inflicted often resembles that left by a lightning strike. The brain is the main target of this damage, causing great bleeding, but adept mages may shift this to other organs, causing these body parts to wither and decay while the practitioner retains their faculties.”  _

There’s a rather gruesome engraving underneath the passage that Rey tries not to let her gaze linger on.

_ “If the mage deflects even this bodily damage, and attempts to push the magic to seek for sustenance outside of themselves, the worst consequence of all can happen: in refusing to yield control or accept a natural limit, energy will be taken from their spirit. Once this occurs, they will constantly need to feed on the energy of living things in order to maintain their own life, or suffer a lingering withering of their entire being, body and soul. It will never kill them in its own right, but they will never be sated. These mages cause widespread destruction outside of themselves. They become a blight on the world, consumed with keeping themselves nourished at all costs.” _

Rey snaps the book shut and raises her head to look at Kylo, who is perfectly still. 

“Well?” she asks him.

“Well what?”

“Doesn’t that remind you of anybody?”

“You already know the answer to that question,” he says. “You don’t need mine.”

“So that’s what Snoke is? He’s—he’s a blight on the kingdom?” She shudders at the memory of Snoke’s presence, at the way it had always felt like the air was being sucked out of her lungs when they were in the same room. “He feeds on life? And death?”

“Especially death.”

A good death. The ticket into Snoke’s court—not only completion of a task, a display of prowess and loyalty, but a meal on a platter for their master.

“How did he end up like that?” she prompts Kylo. “What could he possibly have been trying to do that ended up with him destroying his own soul?”

“He tried to take over this kingdom by force.”

“Yes. I’m aware. And he succeeded!” She gestures loosely at the empty castle around them.

Kylo shakes his head. “Not the first time. There is deep magic in the kingdom, running through this very castle. It protects the land and its people from those who would do it harm. The throne cannot be taken, it can only be given.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Snoke tried to undo that magic. He was so determined to have the throne that he thought he could subvert that magic to his own ends, but he might as well have tried to make the bedrock of this hill get up and dance a jig.”

“It backfired on him?”

“Indeed. It left him ravaged and ravenous—and even more determined to control the kingdom, as a source of sustenance for him.”

“He—he’s the reason Jakku is a desert, isn’t he?” she asks. “All those years people used to make comments about the plains drying up and becoming desert in unnatural ways. It wasn’t just a consequence of war magic, it was _him_.”

“Jakku. Takodana. D’Qar. Snoke will keep taking life from the land as long as there is life to take, and when there is nothing left, he will move onto another place. And another. And another. Until there is nothing left alive except for him, or somebody finds a way to kill him.”

“But—you said the throne cannot be taken. So how _did_ he end up as Emperor?”

Kylo has another one of his subtle mood changes—there’s tension in his shoulders that she doesn’t think has anything to do with his hidden injuries. “The queen left Alderaan to protect her own life, though she did not fully cede the throne, and the only person with any claim to it fell under Snoke’s control.”

“The prince,” Rey murmurs. She understands now why people went to war for Leia when Snoke staged his coup—because if Leia could have returned and the prince been saved, Snoke would have lost again. But instead he’d waged a war few of them had ever seen, happily destroying entire towns and slaughtering their populations. It didn’t matter if all those people died and he had less subjects to rule over when he did win, because they fed him as they died, and his victory was more important than anything.

“So you see why you have to be careful?” Kylo asks her. “Why you cannot trifle with energy manipulation?”

“Don’t worry,” she tells him. “I have no intention of trying to take over the kingdom. Not even for your benefit.”

Kylo stands abruptly. “Not just my benefit. Do you not see the danger he poses to everyone?”

She lifts her chin. “Then perhaps you shouldn’t have been so eager to help him all those years ago.”

Strangely, he deflates at her words, like somebody’s stuck a pin into a balloon. “You’re right. But we all make foolish choices when we’re young.”

Something about his dejected tone rankles her. Instead of feeling pity, or even surprise, at the realization that Kylo regrets whatever it was that led him to supporting Snoke a decade ago, she finds her anger flaring.

“Not all of our choices end up with a mad despot in charge sucking all the life out of the world,” she spits.

“No, but they are capable of doing damage nonetheless,” he fires back. “Floating a feather may seem simple but if you push beyond what you can control, you could injure yourself. Snoke isn’t the only example of that happening. Not knowing what you are doing is dangerous.”

“Then show me!” Rey shoves herself up from her seat. “Rather than having me sit in here reading about it. What are you so afraid of?”

“You could hurt yourself!”

“So?” She throws her hands up. “It’s not like you care.”

He freezes, falling silent. But she can see his chest heaving, like he’s been more exerted by their discussion than he ought to be. 

And as the silence stretches on, her words ringing in her own ears, Rey already knows she is wrong. Kylo does care about her. He'd tried shielding her from the worst of Snoke, had protected her—more often than not putting himself at risk to do so. But in what kind of capacity Kylo cares for her, she's yet to determine. It makes his lack of response unnerving.

“You want to spar,” Kylo eventually says. “Then let’s spar.”

It’s a hollow victory indeed.

* * *

Rey waits for Ben in the darkness, lost in her own thoughts. Her sparring session with Kylo had been perfunctory—she’d been too concerned about his hidden wounds to really push him, and that only seemed to frustrate him further. Instead he’d left after he’d disarmed her twice, and she’d spent the rest of the day in the courtyard, pretending to be as disinterested in the cat as the cat was pretending to be disinterested in her. Her patience had paid off when it finally accepted a corner of pie and a scratch behind the ears. It was enough to help her establish that the cat was, in fact, a boy, and didn’t seem to be carrying fleas.

He likes her now, and apparently Kylo likes her too. It makes sense, she supposes. He treats her so much nicer than he does Ben. Strangely, it isn’t awful to find out that he doesn’t just see her as an annoying apprentice. But her frustration stems from not knowing how exactly he likes her. While she’s not even sure if  _ she  _ likes  _ him _ , she has to admit that she’s certainly doing more than tolerating his company these days. She looks forward to their lessons almost as much as she looks forward to Ben’s nightly visits. And she can’t deny that she has such confusing dreams about him. His standoffish behavior in daylight only makes her more eager for time with Ben, who isn’t reticent about how much he likes her at all.

The quiet is broken by soft footsteps and an angry mewl. The door opens and closes, and Ben pads inside, automatically coming to the bed now she’s given him permission to do so.

“That cat,” he mutters. “It took a swipe at my ankles.”

“Sorry. I didn’t realize he was still out there.”

“I think you need to let him sleep in here.” The bed dips as Ben settles himself. He still sits near the end, with clear space between them where she rests propped up against the headboard. “That way I don’t run the risk of tripping over him.”

“I’ve given him a name,” she tells him.

“Oh?”

“BB-8.”

“That’s…an unusual name for a cat,” he says cautiously. Too neutrally, like he’s keeping his true feelings on it hidden, which means he is.

“I like it,” she replies. 

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it!” he rushes to reassure her. “It’s just that normally people call their pets things like Klaud or Oki-Poki.”

“Oki-Poki is stupid.”

“I agree, but some people like it. Why did you pick BB-8?”

“It comes from a nice memory,” she tells him, suddenly shy again. She hadn’t expected anyone to pry into it—but then she hadn’t really expected to tell anybody about the private name she’d picked for the castle’s newest resident.

“Can I hear it?” he asks softly. When she hesitates, he prompts her. “You don’t seem to have many, so I’d like to hear one. It helps to know your life hasn’t been completely awful.”

“Okay.” She licks her lips. “BB-8 was the name of a part I scavenged from a war engine. Did you know that machines like that are manufactured with particular codes stamped into them?”

“I did not.”

“It’s so that parts can be replaced if they break, without having to replace the entire thing. You go back to the company who built it and tell them the part number, then they give you a new one. Or they would, if most of the companies big enough to make war engines and the things I scavenged out in the desert hadn’t been destroyed by Snoke when he took over.”

It was part of what made the business of scavenging so lucrative. While scrap metal had a value of its own, word had it in Niima that only one of the manufacturing companies remained—by imperial sanction, making parts for the Emperor, and the Emperor alone. It meant anybody who wanted to challenge him couldn’t amass the technology to make it a fair fight against him, and it was near impossible to smuggle parts into the kingdom either. But people had other machinery that needed spare parts—furnaces, mills, winches. If they wanted a new part, they either had to commission a smith to replicate the old one, or find a second hand one.

“Are you saying you named the cat after a piece of machinery?”

“Yes. Although—I suppose it was more about what the part gave me. I was still very young, which meant there was more stuff to scavenge out in the desert—there were entire machines that people just hadn’t got around to picking apart yet. This particular one was half-buried in the sand, and everybody knew it had good stuff inside it, but nobody knew how to get inside it. The hatch was mostly covered up, and if you tried to dig it out, more sand flowed in to cover it back up.”

“But you got in.”

“I did!” She grins at the memory. “It was mostly accidental. I’d had a bad few days and was barely eating, so I went out to that wreck in desperation, not thinking I’d be able to get in, but knowing I had to try. Nobody else was around because they’d given up on trying to get into it, and when I got there I thought I’d walked all the way out there for nothing. Except just as I was ready to turn around, this gust of wind blew the sand drift away. Just enough that I could wiggle my way in.”

She smiles at the memory—at prying the hatch open and squirming her way into the belly of the engine, blinking around in the darkness at all the gleaming metal waiting for her to pick apart. 

“And the BB-8 was inside,” Ben prompts her.

“Yes! I didn’t even need to do much that day—it’s not like I could carry much home, not when I’d barely eaten. So I prised this one part out of the wall, stuffed it in my satchel, and carried it to Unkar Plutt’s stand. I knew it was special from the look on his face—he had this way of squinting when he was going to try and lie about the value of something. I was all prepared to argue for more, but somebody else was there and gave the game away.” 

She laughs a little at the memory of Roodown’s wide eyes at the sight of the gleaming motivator, the way he’d babbled to Plutt. “How’s she got hold of that? Lucky little chit, she’s going to be eating for weeks with that!” And Plutt’s surly, thunderous reaction, slamming down tokens onto the counter without another word.

“They all wanted to know where I got it,” she tells Ben. “They thought I’d found a new wreck they didn’t know about—but I refused to tell them. Those were the rules of Jakku, you didn’t have to tell people anything if you’d found a good haul. It was up to them to do the work and find it if they really wanted it.”

“So did you really eat for weeks because of that part?”

“Weeks and weeks! And I had baths every day, and plenty of water. That machine kept me going for months, because every time I went back to it, I just took out a piece at a time. Nobody figured it out. I would have emptied it and taken the entire haul to Plutt, but people would have stolen all my tokens before I could use them—and it wasn’t safe to keep things in my house. So I had to trust that nobody would figure out what wreck my stuff was coming from until I’d finished with it. But that’s why I chose the name BB-8—it reminds me of a time when I had all the food I wanted and I was as close to happy as I remember.”

“And all because the wind blew away and let you into the engine.”

“Yes! Sometimes when I went there the sand had drifted back, but the wind always picked up enough to let me inside. Sometimes I worried it would drift back and I’d get stuck inside, but it never did.”

“Rey,” Ben says gently. “I don’t think that was wind. I think that was your magic.”

“What?”

“You said it yourself—you were hungry, desperate. I bet you were wishing that something would happen to move the sand.”

“I was,” she whispers.

“You see.”

“Oh.”

So she had used magic in Jakku, without noticing it. She'd manipulated matter without training.

Meaning Kylo was right too, from the very beginning.

And she knows enough now to understand she was lucky. Moving the sand was simple, instinctual—only like moving beans from a pile, or shards of glass. She didn’t need to focus so hard on that, because she hadn’t even been moving individual pieces, just brushing the sand aside in one mass. But if she’d tried doing anything more complicated, like moving machinery pieces—if she’d tried to do anything requiring an energy transfer without knowing what she was doing, or on an empty stomach, who knows what damage she might have done. To herself, to the people around her. There were so many times that she could have lashed out in fear and done something beyond her control or capabilities, and she only now understands how much danger she’d been in left untrained.

“I never knew,” she tells Ben. “I think I might owe Kylo an apology.”

He barks out a surprised laugh. “Really?”

“Yes. I was very insistent that I didn’t want to learn how to wield magic, but this means I need to, don’t I? I need to know what I’m doing so I don’t do anything too dangerous. Him training me is a good thing, even if I don’t like being kept prisoner while he does it.”

“I see,” Ben murmurs. “Well. Don’t go too easy on him.”

“Never,” she replies with a secret smile.

* * *

Rey gives Kylo his apology, begrudgingly, and he doesn’t pry into her change of heart. That only spikes Rey’s frustration—the words are hard enough to force out, and he merely nods and tells her that he’s glad she understands now. It erases any possibility of goodwill on her part for the rest of the day, and she silently stews while he guides her through beginning to melt the glass pieces back together. 

The process is more intricate and tiring than she expected, and her appetite increases exponentially. With the first window complete, over the following days she moves onto the second, working solo under Kylo’s careful observation.

The days ebb and flow in this way. She spends them learning, when Kylo is around, practicing until it becomes second nature to meld one piece of window with another. When the weather is good, she makes quick progress through her sword training, and when it isn’t, they retreat into the library. When Kylo is not around, she reads, and she explores the castle, and she plays games with BB-8, who is now her constant companion in Kylo’s absence.

And at night, Ben comes to her chamber, and they talk and tell each other stories. Ben asks her about Jakku, and her lessons, and what she’s been doing with BB-8. The cat, for his part, never comes inside her chamber, preferring to roam the castle rather than being trapped behind the heavy door.

The season changes around her. The apples on the trees—those which had not succumbed to rot—bloom into fruit almost as big as her fist, though their skins are still deepening in color. There’s something wondrous about them growing this close to Snoke, as if they’re in defiance of his blight. 

Summer is well under way, though it’s a paler, softer cousin of Jakku’s intense heat. In the castle it’s a pleasant experience, tempting her to soak up the sun in the courtyard as often as she can. The pipes which heat the chambers are allowed some rest, while she strips one of the fruit trees of its dark, sweet cherries. She eats them by the handful, letting the juice drip down her hand when she bites into them, licking her fingers clean when she is done. The juices stain her fingers and even her lips, she notices when she passes any reflective surface, and at night she takes them to share with Ben.

It’s another bright morning when Kylo arrives as she’s finishing her breakfast, fresh cherries included, and she turns to find him paused on the threshold. He’s caught between the light and the dark, one foot out into the courtyard like he’d stopped mid-stride, leaving the rest of him within the gloom of the keep. She sucks the last drop of juice from her thumb and waits for him to move.

He doesn’t, not until she takes her thumb from her mouth, and the deep, shuddering breath he takes following that makes it starkly clear to Rey that she was the cause of…whatever that had been.

It makes her own breathing pick up.

“Come to the library,” he instructs her. “Your gift is ready.”

“My gift?” she calls after him, trotting to try and keep up, but his long legs propel him up the stairs faster than she can move.

“For unlocking the library.”

Oh. She’d completely forgotten about that over the past few weeks. She practically skips up the rest of the steps, eager to find out what it is that Kylo has decided to give her. It’s probably not another cake—though she wouldn’t complain—but she can’t imagine what it is that he thinks she’d like.

Whatever it is, it’s propped up on top of the bureau in a long, black box. She can see it as soon as she enters, though Kylo’s pace has slowed and she can only trail after his bulk, without space to slip around him.

“I didn’t intend to give this to you so soon,” he tells her. “I thought it would take you longer to figure out how to get inside here on your own. But I think you’ve progressed enough that it makes sense to give it to you now.”

If she didn’t know better, Rey would think Kylo sounded nervous, almost rambling as they approach the bureau. The box is old and seems almost as long as Rey is tall, but it’s very slim despite that. Whatever is inside gives off a soft pulse of magic, one without a distinct flavor to it, but there nonetheless.

Kylo steps aside, allowing Rey to brush past and step towards the bureau. He makes no move to help her open the box on her behalf, and instead she fumbles along the side, looking for the catch. As she pushes the lid open, letting it fall back against the wood, there’s a burst of magic, like moonlight flowing across her skin.

“Oh!”

It’s a sword. Gleaming, intricate, and old, it nestles on silvery-blue satin that almost matches the color of the blade. It’s been polished recently, and the magic isn’t intrinsic to the metal but has seeped into it through usage. A strange, sad magic that has mostly faded away now. 

“When you leave here,” Kylo tells her, “you’ll have your magic to protect you. But you will need this too.”

“It’s beautiful,” she whispers. “Where did it come from?”

There’s a pause before he answers. “From my own collection.” He clears his throat. “We won’t use it to practice, because we have no facility here for repairing the blade, but it’s yours.”

“Thank you.”

“You earned it.” And she swears he sounds proud—she isn’t imagining it. She bites her lip to contain her smile, but when his back is turned, the smile splits her face from ear to ear, until her cheeks hurt.

When she leaves her, he’d said. The sword seems to be more than a reward; it's something for her to remember him by when they part.

Rey thinks she knows how Kylo cares for her now. She feels a pang of panic, deep inside, at the thought of leaving the castle behind.

* * *

Rey’s smiling when Ben arrives that night, her morose mood of earlier forgotten when she carries the sword up to her room and finally gets to feel its weight in her bare hand. She does little more with it than lift it and give it a practice swing, but it brings all of her earlier excitement bubbling back.

She’s so enraptured by the sword that she almost forgets to get into bed and cover her eyes with her makeshift wraps; instead she’s still admiring the glint of moonlight on the metal next to the duller surface of her staff when she senses Ben’s approach.

She scrambles for the bed, leaving the sword balanced on top of the nearest trunk, and restlessly waits for Ben to creep into the chamber.

He’s the first to speak, after she feels his familiar weight settle on top of the covers.

“You’re in a strange mood tonight,” he observes.

“I am? How can you tell?”

“You feel…sunny.”

“ _ Sunny? _ ”

“You do,” he insists, trying to defend himself. “It feels like I might as well be standing out in the afternoon sun from being this close to you.”

A burn creeps into her cheeks. “Stop being silly.”

“I’m not! I can’t help it that you feel—happy?”

“I suppose I am,” she admits. “Kylo gave me a sword.”

“Oh. And you like it?”

“Mmm-hmm,” she admits with a nod. “I don’t think anybody has ever given me a gift before.”

There’s a pause, and the implications of what she’s just suggested sink in. How can she sit here and admit that she’s happy that the man who is keeping them both prisoner—who has overseen Ben’s torture—gave her a present?

“I mean—it’s nice,” she rushes to explain. “The sword. Not Kylo. Kylo remains terrible. Giving me something doesn’t make me like him. I like you and you’ve never given me a gift—oh, not that I expect you to give me anythi—”

She’s cut off in her ramble by an odd choking noise from Ben’s direction, and when she pauses to figure out what’s happening, it happens again. She panics, thinking that somehow he is choking, until…

“Are you  _ laughing _ at me?”

“No, of course not,” he says, in a voice that very much sounds like he’s trying not to laugh out loud.

“You are!” She reaches for a pillow and tries to swat him with it, but she’s at a massive disadvantage with the blindfold on, and he just plucks the pillow out of her hand.

She grabs for the pillow and instead makes contact with one of his shoulders. He’s closer than she realized, and warm, and solid beneath the soft fabric of whatever he’s wearing. She’s all too aware that she hasn’t touched him since she tended to his wounds, and even the smooth weave of the cloth is coarse compared to how silky his skin had seemed.

She moves her hand again, following the curve of his shoulder and neck until her fingertips meet his face.

“You are,” she repeats. “I can feel it.”

And she can. His mouth is turned up, creating a deep dimple in his cheek that her thumb comes to rest in. His skin is less soft here, roughened by the scattering of hair along his jawline. His face shifts beneath her touch, the smile morphing as his mouth drops open.

“Rey—”

His voice sounds rougher than normal. Maybe it’s a sign she should remove her fingers, but he doesn’t tell her to, so she doesn’t. Instead, the other hand joins the first, stroking along his cheek and mapping out the planes of his face with her fingertips.

“What are you doing?” he asks on an exhale.

“Painting a picture of you in my mind,” she whispers. “I can’t see you with my eyes, but I can like this.”

“You should be glad.” She’s close enough that she can feel his jawline tense as he swallows. “That you can’t see my face.”

“Nonsense,” she tells him, bolder now. “You sound handsome. You  _ feel _ handsome.”

It takes all her courage to say it, to ignore the way her blood has rushed to the surface of her skin. But it’s the truth: he has high cheekbones, a strong brow, a long, straight nose. Everything feels very aristocratic. She can also feel the way his cheeks have heated beneath her touch. He’s as bashful as she is, and somehow that makes it easier.

“I’m nothing compared to you,” he tells her earnestly, and she’s  _ dizzy _ with how warm she feels all over. But it’s more than that—warm tingles spread from the base of her neck down her spine, lighting her entire body up in a way she’s never experienced before. “You’re so pretty. The sun should be jealous of you.”

It’s ri

diculous, because he’s only seen her in the dark confines of this room. In daylight, she knows he’d be disappointed by how plain she is. She’s all freckles and bony limbs, and while she’s never cared about how she looks before, she’s heard enough about the world and what men are supposed to like that she’s a far cry from. Even his eyelashes feel longer than hers.

“I’m just a scavenger. Nothing special.”

“You’re wrong,” he insists. “You’re lovely.”

The tingles have spread, and she feels like she’s floating in the darkness, adrift from her body. Only his warmth beneath her fingertips keep her anchored. 

To stop him saying such absurd things, she turns her attentions, finally, to his mouth. Gently, tentatively, one thumb brushing across his lips. His mouth is wide, as large as the rest of him seems, but his lips are pillowy and plump. The texture of them sends a shock through her, and his gasp makes her drop a shaky hand away.

“You feel lovely,” she admits, gently biting her own lip, then continuing, bolder. “I like being able to touch you.”

“If you could see my face,” he murmurs, “you might not want to touch me at all.”

“Shhhh.” She places a finger over his mouth, to prove she’s serious, and cups his face with her other hand. She traces his cheekbones again, and then, the curve of his lips.

“Rey,” he sighs. She waits for him to say something else. Instead, she feels his mouth purse gently against her finger—a kiss, she is stunned to realize, and when she turns his head, those plush lips press into her thumb.

All the air in her lungs rushes out of them, but so too does any hesitance she had. They’ve been shifting closer together during this entire exchange, and now Rey is near enough to Ben that she could tip her face and rest her forehead against his. 

She doesn’t. Instead, she does the boldest thing she’s done in her life.

She kisses him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on [Tumblr](https://cellar-darlings.tumblr.com/) for a teaser of chapter fourteen on October 10th!


	15. Chapter Fourteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben thinks he has lost complete control of his wits.
> 
> The last few minutes have passed in a strange delirium, his sense of touch stealing center stage from his muted sight. Rey’s face is a smudge of pallor in the darkness, even this close to him, but her fingertips are soft as kitten fur against his skin, light and hesitant. His jaw clenches against the fizz of pleasure that licks across it as her thumb finds his lips. That thumb—the one she’d licked the cherry juice from out in the dappled sunlight of the afternoon, stained a sticky deep pink that had robbed him of any coherent thought when she’d run her tongue across it.
> 
> She’s been saying such sweet things to him, pretty lies that make no sense, but he drinks them down like nectar. Nobody has ever said such honeyed words about him and he freely gorges on them, no matter how ridiculous they may be. She doesn’t know—she cannot know—but he has seen her in sunlight, her mouth ripe and flushed, and even now she glows behind his eyelids. They are incomparable, but she touches him, and when he does the unthinkable and kisses her thumb—imagining the taste of cherries—she doesn’t pull away in disgust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay - especially on _that_ cliffhanger - but I don't anticipate any further delays to future chapters. I will post on [my Tumblr](https://cellar-darlings.tumblr.com/) if that changes.
> 
> Also, my story for the Reylo Fanfiction Anthology 2020 has now posted, which you can read [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26412775). My theme was lava...and the story features lava!dragon Ben. I'm really excited for people to read it!
> 
> Without further ado...

Ben thinks he has lost complete control of his wits.

The last few minutes have passed in a strange delirium, his sense of touch stealing center stage from his muted sight. Rey’s face is a smudge of pallor in the darkness, even this close to him, but her fingertips are soft as kitten fur against his skin, light and hesitant. His jaw clenches against the fizz of pleasure that licks across it as her thumb finds his lips.  _ That _ thumb—the one she’d licked the cherry juice from out in the dappled sunlight of the afternoon, stained a sticky deep pink that had robbed him of any coherent thought when she’d run her tongue across it.

She’s been saying such sweet things to him, pretty lies that make no sense, but he drinks them down like nectar. Nobody has ever said such honeyed words about him and he freely gorges on them, no matter how ridiculous they may be. She doesn’t know—she cannot know—but he has seen her in sunlight, her mouth ripe and flushed, and even now she glows behind his eyelids. They are incomparable, but she touches him, and when he does the unthinkable and kisses her thumb—imagining the taste of cherries—she doesn’t pull away in disgust.

Which is how he knows he has yielded his grip of reality. Because not only does she not pull away, she gives him a kiss of his own.

Her mouth is as light and hesitant as her fingertips, and he barely remembers to breathe, let alone respond. It’s his first kiss; a shameful thing to admit after three decades of life. All he can seem to manage is a low rumble of shock. 

His own hesitation seems to stymie Rey—when he does nothing more than let her lips press against his own, she begins to retreat. It’s then that Ben realizes this is probably  _ her _ first kiss too, and she deserves for it to be worthwhile. He chases her, not letting her break away, snaking a hand into her hair to cradle her against him. He feels her breath puff against his lips as he does so, her gasp of surprise swallowed up by his claim on her. He’s not sure what else to do except—

Except to let himself catch alight.

There’s no other word to describe it. When he allows his surprise to melt into desire, kissing Rey is natural. As natural as magic; its own type of magic. It doesn’t matter if his eyes are closed, he can see her vividly. Not as she is on the outside, but as he did when they first connected all those weeks ago in Snoke’s fortress, as he tried to teach her how to shield herself, the core of his being brushing up against hers. He is silver and she is gold, and he bathes in her light.

She doesn’t taste like cherries, but she’s intoxicating anyway. He wants more, letting his tongue brush her lips and delving further when they part against his. The two of them learn together that there is more to kissing than lips touching lips, and Ben discovers that kissing Rey makes him feel shivery and tight everywhere—even inside he feels molten and adrift.

Rey is the first to pull away, though her fingers remain curled in his hair—and when they got there, he doesn’t know. Ben has no idea how much time has passed. Only that he wants to stay here forever. He doesn’t need to do anything except kiss Rey ever again.

She clears her throat. “I hope you didn’t mind me doing that.” She sounds breathy, flustered. He likes it. He likes having that effect on her.

Ben feels a bubble of laughter form somewhere inside him, but he doesn’t let it float to the surface. Instead he shifts to rest his forehead against Rey’s. “Sweetheart, I have liked very little else in my life, but that I could do forever.”

It elicits the most un-Reylike reaction from her. She giggles.

And  _ that _ elicits a most un-Benlike reaction in turn. He giggles along with her, wishing he could find a way to bottle the sensation—if this could be stored as a tonic to drink at ease, Snoke’s dark magic would be easily defeated. 

The giggles turn into more kisses, and the kisses turn into the quiet, distant sound of birds singing the sunrise into being. Dawn is approaching, and he is startled by it, wrenching away from Rey with a sour note of panic.

“I have to go,” he tells her, and she clings to him. He thinks she is about to beg him to stay, the way her hand tightens around his. He can feel her callouses now, but he doesn’t mind them. Not when it’s because she is touching him like this, instead of the tentative way she caressed his face, or tended to his wounds.

Rey relents, nodding and loosening her grip. “Kylo will be here soon,” she murmurs, and it is unfair they are so unbalanced like this. He can see her, as she is meant to be—the golden light of sunrise dusting her cheeks, her hair loose and mussed around her shoulders—ruffled from his fingers, and it is silkier than he’d imagined—and her lips a little swollen, kissed to the color of cherry juice.

He doesn’t want to leave her. He doesn’t want to maintain this facade any longer. She needs to know—she deserves to know—but when he opens his mouth to spill the truth, his throat tightens up enough to choke him. Snoke’s curses are airtight.

“I’ll make sure Kylo doesn’t arrive too early today,” he tells her instead. “You should get some rest.”

It’s meant to be comforting. It’s meant to allow them both some sleep, so he is rested enough to teach her, and she is rested enough to learn. But instead this causes her to tighten her grip again.

“Don’t do anything to annoy him and get yourself hurt,” she insists. 

“I won’t.” He melts at her concern, and presses a chaste kiss to her forehead. “Besides, it’s not Kylo’s temper I have to watch out for.”

“No?”

“No. It’s Snoke’s.” He pushes himself away before he decides to keep her pinned to the bed all day, blindfolded, while he kisses her. “And yours.”

Her mouth drops open, and he’s already halfway out of the door—laughing like he is drunk on sweet, bubbly wine—when she tries to lunge after him with a pillow.

Outside her chamber, reality is altogether more sobering. If being in Rey’s arms was like being intoxicated, this is like having his head dunked into a vat of ice water—something Snoke had used in the past to ensure alertness among his men. The corridor outside her room contains a chill—and a waiting feline who stares up at Ben with clear disdain. He leaves the door open a crack, enough to allow the cat to go to her, and then retreats in his best imitation of silence up the stairs to his own chamber. 

Dawn splashes the chamber in shades of pink and gold, so unlike it’s normal stark stone. Despite the instant souring of his mood, his skin still tingles with the memory of Rey. It propels him into the refresher, to the iciest water, to keep sobering himself. 

When the chill has chased the edge of giddiness away, his thoughts are clearer. Rey doesn’t feel for him the same way that he does about her. It’s impossible—she doesn’t even know what he looks like, or the full truth of the situation. She is tolerating the presence of Ben because she has no other company except for the cat. More than that, no matter how she may claim to feel about Ben, she’s already proven that she will never like or trust Kylo Ren.

And he  _ is _ Kylo Ren. The blank mask staring at him from across the room confirms that, even if the face staring at him from the refresher’s cracked mirror contains so much of Han Solo within it. Ben Solo is now little more than an echo of an earlier time, before his soul was stained by the deeds he committed for Snoke.

Nonetheless. He is weak—whether he calls himself Ben or Kylo—and he cannot resist the lure of her company. If she is lonely, he will do whatever he must to remedy that, and to sate himself with her presence while he has it.

If only his body would understand that.

He hasn’t been touched in  _ that _ kind of context ever. Not even by himself. Back when Ben—the gullible, malleable boy—had been on the cusp of adolescence, Snoke dripped all kinds of poison into his psyche about the dangers of self-exploration. Worse, he’d convinced Ben that  _ he _ would know if he ever tried it. That had brought about a special set of nightmares, ones where pleasant dreams and sticky sheets gave way to cold sweats and nausea. From then on, Ben had channeled any urges he felt into his anger, which fueled his magic. Exactly as Snoke had intended.

Age and bitter experience taught Kylo that Snoke wasn’t as omniscient as he’d been led to believe, but by the time he’d realized it, he saw more use in his anger anyway. Like everything else he denies himself, bodily pleasure is for other people, those who don’t wield a blood-stained sword. Without any other outlet to escape through, the energy feeds into his magic, and Snoke smugly claims the benefit of it.

Now, even the sickly memories of those years are overwritten by the lingering taste and scent of Rey, the way she’d felt warm and solid in his arms. Cold water is his only defense.

But when he rolls into his cot, shivering from the icy sting, he is visited by nobody at all in his dreams. Not the creeping, rotting figure of Snoke from his adolescent nightmares, nor Rey’s blooming warmth appear at all.

* * *

It is long past noon when he emerges, and Rey is once again in the courtyard, playing a game with BB-8. She has tied a bunch of feathers to a piece of string and drags it along the ground for the cat to chase, then whips it away and dangles it above his head for him to pounce up at. 

She’s certainly in high spirits. 

It makes the feelings he'd experienced in her chamber come rushing back, his belly and knees reduced to glowing smelt. He wants to rip the helmet off and rush to her, to kiss her in the sunlight the way she deserves. It would be worth the pain.

But if he did that, she would not tolerate his approach. He’d be lucky to escape with a jab of her staff into his abdomen.

Her smile fades when she notices him, though it doesn’t disappear entirely. 

“What time do you call this?” she asks him archly.

Kylo takes a moment to examine her face, to see if there is any evidence of how she feels after last night. She is often so inscrutable to him and never more so than today. Physically, he can see where he has left proof of their kisses—his skin not so smooth overnight, so many hours after shaving, and he must have scraped her delicate chin. But beyond that, as her mischievous delight vanishes, he is unable to tell if he has had any effect on her. 

Did she lie awake thinking of him when he left her? Did she perhaps curl into the bedsheets, pressing her fingers against her lips in a pale imitation of his mouth against hers? Did she smile into the darkness, dream of him, yearn for his return? Was she eager for the night to come again?

Or had she been merely curious about what kissing was like? Had it been easier to do it under the cloak of night, with not even their own eyes as witness? 

Worse, had she found herself regretting her choices in the cold morning light, rebuking herself for what she’d done? 

He wants to ask her and can’t, so instead he must torture himself with questions he will never find the answer to helpfully printed across her face. But that she seems much as she did yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, is answer enough on its own. The experience cannot have been as earth shattering for her as it was for him; otherwise there would be no hiding it from her demeanor.

He’d seen it in himself this morning, reflected back from the cracked mirror he uses to shave. Nothing physically had changed, but something within him, something indefinable and intangible, had shifted. Only the mask covers it up, and yet he doesn’t see that same change reflected in Rey.

To cover his internal torment, he grabs a practice sword from the stash and tosses it at her. She catches it deftly, barely even moving to yank it from the air with magic, and that makes him smile behind the mask. However she feels about their kisses or him, he will never be less than charmed by her displays of prowess. 

“Time for me to beat you,” he challenges her. “Again.”

Later, when she is radiant with sweat—her cheeks flushed, her throat glowing—he leads her back into the room of windows one final time. 

“I think you’re ready to repair this in one step,” he says. 

She looks at him with wide eyes. “Are you sure?” 

They’ve been building up to this for weeks, the evidence of their work glittering around their feet, an elaborate rainbow patchwork they have to walk between when they’re in the throne room. 

“I am,” he tells her. “You have the control, so long as you concentrate. Don’t push too hard, don’t panic—and remember I am here to help if you feel like you are going to do something beyond your limits. Reach out for me with your mind and I will assist you.”

“And if I fail?”

_ You won’t. _ “Then you try again tomorrow.”

She nods stiffly, then turns to the splintered stained glass below them with a furrowed brow, the pieces laid out alongside each other like a jigsaw puzzle made of precious stones. All it will take is Rey threading them back into one piece with her magic. She examines it, as if to hold the design in her mind’s eyes, then closes her eyes. 

The look of concentration melts away as she tunes into the room around her, to the glass at her feet like he has shown her. She looks peaceful when she works like this—not fighting to make it happen, which is the most dangerous approach, but pouring her magic out into the world around her and letting it heal the fractures it finds. He shivers, a ripple of nostalgia passing through him at magic being used like it was in his mother’s court, rather than for the violent ends of Snoke’s rule.

It even brushes up against him, as golden as it was when they touched the night before, as if searching for what might be healed within him. Finding nothing it can repair, it moves on.

Rey takes a few deep breaths, raising her hands with the palms facing down to channel her power, and Kylo watches as the glass begins to melt, liquefying against the flagstones, the colors flowing into one another. It only takes a few seconds when the process has begun, and it’s a treasure to watch the intensity of the shades in the glass crystallize once more. 

Kylo is convinced she doesn’t just repair the windows, but improves them, removing whatever impurities had been caught inside by the original craftsmen and making each and every hue more vivid.

When Rey opens her eyes again, she gives a delighted yell.  _ Breha’s last procession _ is restored to its original glory, shining mere steps away from the dais the queen herself had once filled. 

Breha’s glossy auburn hair spills out around her delicate face, eyes closed, and an ocean of flowers surround her bier. Somehow the artist had captured a sense of peace on her face, and it must have been a good likeness, because there is something of his mother in her jaw and cheekbones. 

Rey stares at the completed image with a delighted rapture, crouching to examine the details without touching it.

“Who was she?” she asks him.

_ My great-grandmother.  _ Kylo doesn’t admit that, of course. He’s not even sure he could tell her. “She was a queen here. Before Snoke.” Most of the regents were committed to glass over the centuries, especially any great deeds of magic they performed. If things hadn’t gone the way they’d gone, Kylo suspects his mother would have eventually commissioned a piece to honor his grandfather, despite his flawed legacy.

“Does that mean she could use magic?”

“What makes you ask that?”

“I heard—” she pauses as she thinks. “Somewhere I heard that kings and queens could all use magic.”

“Not all of them,” Kylo tells her. “Most of them, yes. But Queen Breha was on the throne through marriage and never wielded magic.”

Rey lapses into thoughtful quiet and she spends a minute pondering this before asking another question. Before she does, she rises from her crouch, gesturing for them to leave the throne room for the sunshine outside. 

“Why can we use magic and not other people?” she asks as they walk.

“That’s a good question.” And complicated.

“But do you know the answer to it?” she pushes.

“No,” he admits. “I suspect the answer to that question is like asking how the world was created, or what happens after we die. People like to pretend they know the answer, but it’s a guess.” He hesitates before adding on a thought that is more deeply his own opinion, one he’d first started forming when he studied magic in his youth. “We might want to know the truth but it’s probably for the best that we don’t.”

Rey looks at him sharply, but he doesn’t elaborate on it further. Kylo knows of two people who tried to get to the root of magic, and both suffered terrible consequences. He might not like Snoke, yet Kylo still wouldn’t wish what he’d managed to inflict upon himself on anyone. And his grandfather’s awful quest had hurt none more than his beloved wife. In the end, those ruthless searches for information—and power, because both sought to understand only so they could have ultimate control—led to dire consequences for the entire kingdom. This, he’d learned not from history books, but from lived experience. So it’s not a question Kylo has any interest in.

And truth be told, he has especially little interest in such philosophical musings today of all days. Instead he would rather watch Rey eat a bowl of cherries, then wish away the hours until it is night and he can sneak to her rooms once more to kick the flavor from her lips.

Alas. There is still an hour or two of lessons he must commit to, and so he ushers her up to the library, where fruit of any kind is forbidden, lest sticky juices mar the pages found within. He’d learned that lesson as a boy when he tried to smuggle in a pear in his pocket—he’d been unable to cross the threshold with it.

Rey’s head must still be brimming with thoughts, because she’s not deterred from her questions. “Are you sure that nobody has written about it?”

He suppresses a sigh. “There are endless books in the library that deal with the matter, yes. But they don’t contain a definitive truth, no matter how much they like to pretend they do.”

“Can I read some of them?” she asks as they ascend the stairs.

It’s not what he had planned to get her reading today—he was going to guide her in the direction of something that built on what she’d achieved with the window, something light and quick. But if she is eager to study something else, perhaps he should let her. If she’s interested in the topic, it’s more likely to hold her attention.

“Very well.”

He selects three volumes when they’re inside, setting them on the bureau and moving away, to search for something that might hold his interest while she reads. The library does contain more than books about magic, and it’s the mundane topics which he has largely never read. Herbs, recipes, art—few of them intrigue him now, though as he browses the stacks he becomes aware that the extensive knowledge of this place truly is extensive. Esoteric, but also earthy and grounded in many ways.

Or so the spines of some of the books suggest.  _ Pleasure and Harmony in the Marital Bed. A Thousand Nights of Erotic Bliss. The Carnal Arts. _

He scurries away furtively, as if there were anybody around to read the titles over his shoulder and judge him for even glancing in their direction. Strange, how he’d never noticed their existence before. Now, as if the library is mocking him, he seems to keep stumbling across little caches of books that his adolescent self would have merrily squirreled himself away in one of the nooks with, Snoke be damned. And perhaps the fact he’d been unaware of them at the time wasn’t accidental—if the library itself hadn’t shielded its more inappropriate contents from him when he was that age, then his mother might well have.

It’s not like he needs the knowledge contained within. Rey may have kissed him but that is where their interactions will end. His shaky understanding, as gleaned from Hux and the Guard’s boasting of such things, is that women do not welcome a man’s touch except for when they want to conceive a babe. Kylo will not do anything to make Rey uncomfortable, least of all that.

He is rescued from his internal mortification by Rey herself, who sets down the book she has been browsing and looks at him with the wrinkled brow which means she’s deep in thought.

“This book talks about spirit,” she begins. “As a type of energy. One we can manipulate like any other kind of energy. That’s why misuse of energy manipulation does such damage to a person—if it backfires, it attacks their spirit and feasts on it as an energy source.”

“That’s the theory, yes.”

“It even suggests that use of spirit energy is a third branch of magic, alongside matter manipulation and energy manipulation.”

Kylo shrugs. “How we categorize magic is largely arbitrary. It feels different and easy to learn in different branches, but I don’t think it matters much to magic itself how we label its different uses.”

She considers this. “That’s fair. But the book talks here about how rare it is for people to really delve into learning all the ways of using spirit energy.”

Kylo resists the urge to shift from foot to foot. He’s sure there are books around here that go in depth into that kind of thing, and he doesn’t want Rey anywhere near them. Of all the magic to go wrong or to lead to corruption of the soul, it’s spirit work. “Let’s not run before we can walk.”

Rey shakes her head. “I wasn’t—I’m not that interested in learning it. But some of the things it classifies as spirit magic, I know I have done. Communicating with somebody mentally, for example. You showed me that, on one of my first nights in the fortress. When you taught me to how to keep Snoke out of my head.”

He fights the urge to clear his throat. “It can be a very effective way of teaching concepts that are difficult to put into words.”

“I suppose I can understand that. Only...the book describes it as a very intimate thing to do.”

She pauses, waiting for a reaction. He’s not sure what kind of reaction she is expecting, but for every second of her silence ticking by, her stare bores into his face. He panics, afraid that she has found a way to see through the mask and into his mind—she  _ has _ been inside it before—but he maintains his stillness. 

Rey is the first to blink, and when she glances away, he swears she shutters a drip of disappointment behind her own mask of indifference. 

He fights for some cold indifference of his own. “I’m sure you preferred learning that way with me, than letting Snoke back inside your head. His version of intimacy is never pleasant.”

She can’t contain her shudder, and he thinks she will move on, but she stays doggedly pursuing whatever point she has to make. “But this is why people have a particular feel to them, isn’t it? If spirit is a kind of magic, then who we are can be felt magically too. At least to other magic users. There’s a truth to it that can’t be concealed.”

“That’s an interesting way of putting it.”

“I think—I think I remember once learning about the idea of a soul. I don’t know where I heard it. I must have been tiny. But it makes sense to me. It’s why people feel a particular way, because how they feel is who they are.”

“And why is that important?”

“Because souls are unique. They have to be.”

“How does this relate to your earlier question about who can and can’t do magic?”

“I’m not sure,” she admits. “But this is more interesting to me anyway. If we can feel what other people are like—it helps us make decisions, doesn’t it? About who to trust. About who is good and who isn’t. People can’t lie about who they are to us, not really.”

Once again, she has him sweating. Does this mean she is second-guessing kissing him last night? When he’d held her, her sweet spirit and innate goodness had shone through stronger than ever to him. Had the prolonged physical contact strengthened her ability to examine his spirit, and she now found him lacking?

“Perhaps,” he tells her around a dry throat. “But you’d be best not relying on that too much. People are complex, layered beings, and to truly understand someone’s spirit takes more than a cursory judgment. The very best liars will be able to convince you to go against your own instincts.”

“No.” She shakes her head. “I think the very best liars have convinced themselves they’re something they aren’t, and that shows up in their spirit, like cracks. But they can’t hide who they really are, not even from themselves.”

Another inscrutable stare—another pointed comment meant for him, one that only fuels his worst instincts. Surely she is talking about Ben, and how she has unraveled the uppermost layers of Ben’s spirit to discover the rot within, like an onion left in store too long.

“You won’t be needing to consider any of that for a while,” he tells her. “There’s hardly anybody to practice on within this castle. Perhaps your attention is best turned to more practical learning.”

“You’re right.” She nods, sitting up straighter behind the bureau. “I’ve made good progress, right? With fixing the windows. So I get another reward.”

“I can arrange for a cake to be brought in the next few days.”

“No. I don’t want cake.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I want you to teach me how to make light.”

* * *

He’s a damn fool. Again. He waits as long as he can, pacing in the tower chamber until long after darkness has fallen. He should have told her no. He should have reminded her that she doesn’t need light while she’s in the castle.

But she’d looked at him with such pleading, eager eyes. And then she’d made an extremely smart argument about how so many of the books referred to producing and sustaining light as such a fundamental magical skill, that he hadn’t been able to summon up a reasonable rebuttal, even to himself. He can’t leave her not knowing how to do that, when she could come across any kind of scenario outside of the castle which requires light. It might even save her life. Besides, she knows she can’t use the light at night, without risking her own life, or causing Ben pain if she sees his face—she’s not going to do anything foolish with it.

He will have to trust her. He has no doubt she will take the light to begin exploring the dungeons and the tunnels that connect them, but she’ll not find them leading her to a secret path out of the castle. Only royalty, by blood or marriage, can open the portals, even with powerful magic behind them. It’s another part of the intricate layers of magic that Snoke was unable to overturn or wrest control over with his invasion, and why he’d been forced to establish his court elsewhere.

Kylo feels nauseated at the thought of going to her tonight, in a way he never has before. Not because he isn’t eager to see her again, but because he fears what she will have to say. If she is going to reject him—whether harshly, casting him out from her chambers forevermore, or gently, telling him that the kiss was a mistake she would not like to repeat—he would rather put it off as long as he can. She’s the only person in his life who hasn’t turned him away yet, and he would like to keep it that way a while longer.

So he does the cowardly thing. He doesn’t go to her.

The night is, theoretically, a short one. Midsummer has swelled past them already and the days are ebbing, but there are still few hours of true night. And yet, it drags on and on, as Kylo waits in his chamber for morning to come, each second dragging by like it’s been anchored in place.

In the end, he doesn’t even make it to dawn. He creeps down through the passages, at first intending only to leave Rey a note and then flee without having to face her. But he has not visited the Tekkas for a few days. He fears leaving Rey without a ready supply of food, for however long it will be until he feels ready to return and deal with her scorn. So it is to the Tekkas he first heads.

Luckily, they keep early hours. When Kylo emerges, Dasha is out in the mucky pre-dawn light, sifting out chicken feed across the yard. It must be impossible to sleep any later than they do with the rooster making such a racket at the barest hint of sunrise. Not that the sky is clear enough to appreciate a sunrise here—Coruscant always feels like it is suffering ashfall, the air thick and smoky.

Lor San sits on the steps into the house smoking a pipe of, from the scent of it, stinkweed. No wonder the old man always looks so peaceful. No wonder he always got on with Han. He nods at Kylo, apparently unsurprised by the visit at this odd hour, then cocks his head to one side to consider him.

“Ah,” he says.

Kylo holds one finger up to him. “No.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“But you were intending to. I don’t need your guidance, old man. I’ve come to raid your stores once more in exchange for coin.”

“Yet you’ll be back soon, won’t you? Taking the horse and turning tail for a while.”

“What I do with my time is none of your concern.” Kylo turns towards Dasha. “I will take as much as you can provide. In two bundles—things that will travel put in Grimtaash’s panniers, and the rest I will take to the castle.”

She nods, handing off her pouch of grain to a younger girl who is searching for eggs in the coop, and disappears inside. But she, annoyingly, has a sympathetic smile for him as she passes by.

“You have no need to humor me, of course,” Lor San says. “And I’m quite sure you won’t listen to my advice, but I’ll give it anyway, since it’s about the only thing I have left to give.”

“Save it—”

“There’s no point running away from a problem, not when you will inevitably have to return to deal with it.”

That’s easy for him to say. Kylo knows he’s being a coward, but he doesn’t want to face the sting of rejection just yet. He’s got a plan to avoid it  _ and _ keep Snoke from figuring out his ruse, and there is nothing which can dissuade him from his path.

Kylo stalks away from Lor San to check on Grimtaash, who is characteristically brusque about being woken from his slumber. The stable hand is instructed to prepare the mount for a longer journey, and Kylo emerges in time to catch Dasha bringing out his bundle of food.

“There’s a cherry pie on top, since they’re in season and so plentiful. Freshly made—still warm—so I’ve put a pot of cream in to go with it. If she likes cake, I imagine she wouldn’t say no to pie. I think that ought to soften the blow a little bit for whoever it is you’re leaving behind.”

Kylo can’t even bring himself to say thank you to her around the wave of fierce emotion that strikes him at the mention of cherries. Lust and heartbreak in equal measure, the fruit now irrevocably tied to the thought of Rey. It’s a fitting gift for her.

He makes his way back to the castle, entering through the portal into the kitchen, and leaving all the food in the pantry. Except for the pie, which he places carefully on top of the stove, ready to be eaten when she comes down for breakfast. She must have rested much better last night, without his presence interrupting her sleep, and he can only imagine what a good mood she will be in to find this waiting for her. It’s all been a gift for her: peace, and food, and a reprieve from having to let him down gently.

He pins a note underneath the pie.  _ I have been called away on an urgent mission. I may be away for some days. _

His quill hovers as he prepares to sign off. He wants to leave her an indication of his affection—and a suggestion of Ben’s safety, should she worry about his absence when he does not return either. But what can he write? A signed confession of his subterfuge? The curse freezes his hand in midair at the very idea of it.

A rustle at the door has him ready to abandon the note as it is, but it’s only the cat making his early morning prowl of the castle grounds. BB-8 sniffs at his boots after creeping into the kitchen, then sits back on his haunches and begins to lick his paw delicately. As if Rey has succeeded in taming him not only for herself, but for the pair of them.

Kylo returns to the note, finally adding a line that says none of what he feels and will engender no affection on Rey’s behalf.

_ Do not neglect your lessons in my absence. _

It’s what she expects from him.

But he does find himself retrieving a small bowl from the set Dasha has provided, and pouring some cream into it, setting it on the ground for BB-8. The cat gives a curious mew and begins lapping it up, disinterested in Kylo as he opens the portal into the tunnels.

At least somebody may be pleased to see him when he returns.

* * *

Traveling on horseback is slower than using the Silencer. He does not push Grimtaash especially hard, but since he will not use wayside inns or stables—he does not trust them with the mount’s safety—his progress is limited. They rest at the best places Kylo can find to camp, away from the roads they travel on. He has no particular destination in mind. His only intention is to ensure that Kylo Ren—Snoke’s enforcer, the Imperial Guard personified, the wraith small children are told terrifying stories of—is seen crossing the kingdom. Enough that if Snoke ever grows suspicious and investigates the truth of Kylo’s work, there are rumors of his travels.

And then, when he feels he has done enough, he takes the Imperial road back to the fortress, where he knows exactly what awaits him for his failure to find Maz Kanata or the rump of the Resistance. This time, he welcomes his punishment.

Snoke doesn’t know what to do with that.

It’s a full two weeks after leaving Rey that he returns to the castle, with fresh wounds striping his back. He takes food from the fortress stores this time, bypassing the Tekkas entirely, so he will not have to face either Lor San or Dasha in their compassionate wisdom. 

He expects to find Rey out in the courtyard, since the sun is up high on this morning, the courtyard in full bloom. And it is a full bloom—it is as if it has burst into life in his absence: spindly weeds with merry yellow heads pushing through cracks in the flagstones; the apples on the cluster of trees round and rosy; the old kitchen garden plot neatly taken back to soil and then re-seeded. But Rey is not to be found here.

Next he goes to the library. There is evidence of her presence—copious notes, and discarded books piled up, and crumbs across the surface of the bureau. But he checks every single hidden nook and cannot find her.

Kylo goes to her chamber. Then he goes to his chamber, on the extremely unlikely but frightening chance that she has found her way into the tower. But there is no trace of her either here or there, and he is not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed.

He begins a frantic, methodical search of the castle, room by room. It takes him well past noon, but no matter how quickly he moves, how hard he pushes himself, he cannot sense even a hint of Rey’s presence. Not in any corner. She has been here, some places drenched in her essence so much that they glitter with the aura she has left behind, but Rey herself cannot be found.

It leaves only one place she can have gone—and that is down. Yet he hadn’t yet taught her how to make light, and she can’t explore below ground without it.

Nevertheless, he has to search below. For if she cannot be found in the cellars and dungeons, she cannot be found at all. He left her too long, when he knows how clever she is, how quick to learn and master new skills. With the run of the library and all the time in the world to do what she liked, without him here to distract her and focus her attention on what he thinks is safe for her to learn, who knows what she has done. What she has discovered. The castle holds secrets even he does not know about.

Which leaves him with the icy possibility that perhaps Rey has done the impossible after all. He ran away from her, too afraid of having his tender feelings quashed. Now he must face that in doing so he has given her the opportunity to do what she has always intended, and deliver him an even greater rejection.

Perhaps she has found her way out of the castle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on [Tumblr](https://cellar-darlings.tumblr.com/) for a teaser of chapter fifteen on October 31st!


	16. Chapter Fifteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first night is the easiest. She expects elation and anticipation to keep her awake, but she’s so wiped out from sleeping so little the night before, from weapons training with Kylo, from putting the window back together, that when she settles into her bed and curls up, she drifts away easily.
> 
> She’s fallen asleep without meaning to before, but Ben has woken her up when she did. His mere presence is usually enough to wake her, but she’s sure he’d have found other ways if it hadn’t. She’s a light sleeper as it is, after living on edge for years in Jakku, where she’d had to be ready to wake and defend herself and her stuff at the slightest noise. 
> 
> It’s why the birds wake her, serenading the dawn, leaving her blinking and confused behind the blindfold. She holds her breath, reaching out with a gentle wisp of magic to see if she can feel Ben’s presence nearby, but the chamber feels quite empty.
> 
> Confused, she tears the blindfold away, and her eyes are able to confirm it: she’s completely alone. There isn’t even a remnant of his presence to suggest he came by during the night.
> 
> All the giddiness she’d carried with her during the day yesterday bursts and dissipates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now, to take us over the 100,000 word mark - here's a 10,000 word chapter. As a treat in celebration of the Orange Goblin being defeated.
> 
> Potential content warning: mentions of disordered eating, starting with the words "She's been a fool" and ending with "She turns to the library."

The first night is the easiest. She expects elation and anticipation to keep her awake, but she’s so wiped out from sleeping so little the night before, from weapons training with Kylo, from putting the window back together, that when she settles into her bed and curls up, she drifts away easily.

She’s fallen asleep without meaning to before, but Ben has woken her up when she did. His mere presence is usually enough to wake her, but she’s sure he’d have found other ways if it hadn’t. She’s a light sleeper as it is, after living on edge for years in Jakku, where she’d had to be ready to wake and defend herself and her stuff at the slightest noise. 

It’s why the birds wake her, serenading the dawn, leaving her blinking and confused behind the blindfold. She holds her breath, reaching out with a gentle wisp of magic to see if she can feel Ben’s presence nearby, but the chamber feels quite empty.

Confused, she tears the blindfold away, and her eyes are able to confirm it: she’s completely alone. There isn’t even a remnant of his presence to suggest he came by during the night.

All the giddiness she’d carried with her during the day yesterday bursts and dissipates.

Had she—had she been too forward? Had she misinterpreted the closeness between them, taking what Ben saw as an easy companionship and pushing it in a direction he didn’t want it to go in?

She’d been so sure, the previous night. Despite her lack of experience, despite her lack of ever even witnessing what might be described as romance in her life, she’d been certain that the atmosphere between them had been drawing them together. She’d felt his own shaky exhilaration when she talked to him and touched his face. His reaction hadn’t been platonic at all. He’d kissed her first, that shy graze of his lips against her thumb—it hadn’t been her imagination. And though he’d frozen when she kissed him properly, he  _ had _ responded. He’d kissed her back, holding her, whispering her name. It had been everything she’d hoped for.

So why hadn’t he come back?

A thousand scenarios crowd her mind, none of them good or pleasant, and her first instinct is to hide back under the covers and ignore the day. But the birds are too insistent in their song, and so too is her mind, wanting to know where Ben is and why he didn’t return.

In the end, she abandons her hopes of returning to sleep and crawls out of bed, washing herself briskly in the refresher. The hollow feeling inside due to Ben’s absence isn’t exactly hunger, but she hopes she can cure it with food anyway.

When she reaches the kitchen, there’s a cherry pie waiting for her on the stove, warm and glistening. She reads Kylo’s note and her stomach tightens at the implications of his absence and what that might mean for Ben; if Kylo has to spend time at the fortress, is that where Ben was last night? Did he not come to her through no fault of his own?

It’s both a cheering thought, and an awful one. It would mean he likely did want to come to her, but was prevented by circumstance, and that just makes her fear what state he will be in tonight.

BB-8 has finished lapping up a bowl of cream that’s been placed on the floor, and despite everything, the sight of it makes Rey smile. There’s a lingering edge of Kylo’s frenetic energy in the room—he’s not long since left, and the fact that she can sense it confirms she’s getting better at discerning that kind of energy. The spirit energy she’d read about yesterday. Not only is she finding that she can feel Ben more acutely the longer she spends with him—his emotions shivering through her as they kissed—but that it’s easier to read Kylo, and get sense impressions from him too.

He thinks he’s a terrible man, and she’s told him he is one often enough. Maybe he is. He’s certainly done terrible things. Yet he’s not rotten through and through, not like some of them. Who else would leave cream out for a cat? Who else would have saved her life twice? 

Whatever hold Snoke has on him, whatever makes his magic churn and surge around him with such violent, raw energy, that isn’t the whole of him. At his center there’s a core of something she thinks could be brilliant, if nurtured and allowed to shine. A little foundation of light, shadowed as it is, guttering like a candle in a gale but never quite blowing out. With enough kindling, it could grow into a blaze strong enough to burn down Snoke and all he stands for.

She’s felt it, because she’s been intimate with Kylo too, in their own way. Back in the fortress when he’d tried to teach her to shield herself from Snoke, they’d seen each others’ souls. And despite all his protests, despite the lies he tells himself, despite even the things she’s said to him, there  _ is _ good in him.

With nothing better to do in his absence, she takes herself to the library, carrying on from where she left off yesterday. Kylo hasn’t left her any particular reading she should be doing, so she sates herself in all she can find about spirit energy. 

Much of it is too esoteric for her to follow—lots of theory, very little practical information—but the lighter texts give her plenty to consider. Kylo might not be willing to commit himself to any particular philosophies, but she’s happy to build her own. She knows this much: souls exist; magic itself is neither good or bad, but the actions of those who wield it can be; and if you do too much harm to other people it corrupts the soul.

She works her way through the cherry pie and cream, indulging herself while it’s fresh, and pours out more cream for BB-8 in the evening, leaving the bowl beside her chamber door.

Ben doesn’t come. Nor does sleep come as easily for Rey tonight.

She wraps the rags around her eyes, dutifully, and burrows down beneath the blankets, waiting for the familiar footsteps outside her door, and the thread of smoky essence that announces Ben’s approach. But the passageway outside her door is silent, except for the occasional scuttle of BB-8’s claws against the floorboards, and the door itself remains resolutely closed.

She wishes there was something she could do when sleep eludes her like this. She knows within the first hour that Ben won’t be visiting her tonight—that he’s not even in the castle—but she doesn’t remove the blindfold. What’s the point? She can’t go anywhere without light to see by, and she still doesn’t know how to conjure it, nor is it any safer for her to do so than when she arrived.

Well. Kylo has already agreed to teach her how to make light. She will hold him to that promise when he arrives tomorrow—she’ll make it their priority. Then, with care, she could make her way to the library at night and read when sleep will not take her under. That would at least be a useful way to pass the time, rather than staring at the back of her eyelids and imagining what might be happening to Ben.

At some point she does lapse into sleep, but it’s no more pleasant than when she was awake. Her fitful dreams are closer to memories, leaving her back in Snoke’s throne room. The room is pitifully lit, despite the acrid stench of tallow candles, and frigid. The fireplaces are inadequate for the draughty stone construction of the fortress, but more than that, Snoke sucks the warmth out of the place, leaving her skin creeping with goosebumps. Even despite the heavy wool and fur of her boots, her feet feel cool, like she’s standing on the stone barefoot.

But most of all, she feels the weight of the switch in her hand, the one she’d used to lash Kylo. Heavy, pitted wood, which has been wielded by many hands over the years, worn smooth by the oils in their skin or the wax on their gloves. It had been a very particular weight, one she’d hated, and now she knows she was feeling the impression of everyone who’d ever used it. Their quiet glee or bitter distaste for the task was imprinted into the wood, reflected back at her through bare touch.

She remembers how the switch had arced and scythed through the air, meeting resistance that made her flinch and close her eyes with every lash.

When she wakes, her throat is tight, the rags stuck to her skin with sweat. It’s been a long time since she woke up like this, with the talons of bad dreams still piercing her—not since Ben began visiting her. She throws the blankets away, tears the blindfold off, aware that dawn is only hinted at on the horizon, but she doesn’t care. If it’s enough to see by, she’d rather start her day now. 

BB-8 is waiting by the door with a quiet mew. If he was capable of real expression, she’d think he looked concerned. Instead, he brushes around her ankles in a figure of eight, then accompanies her down the stairs. Probably looking for food. Her too.

But the cat doesn’t abandon her even after being fed the very last of the cream and a few flakes of fish. He follows her up to the library, and when she holds the door open, he trots over the threshold without any hesitation—on his part, or the library’s.

She already knows not to expect Kylo today. He’d said he might be away for a few days, and instinct promises her that his warning will hold true.

BB-8 is good company as she stacks books on the bureau that might help her in her mission. He settles underneath it, sprawled on his back with his belly exposed like this is a normal part of his routine. Rey’s already read most of the books she’s collecting together, but now she returns to them, copying out detailed notes about the theory and practice of wielding light. Over and over, until she is confident she understands what she needs to do perfectly.

“In here is no good,” she mutters to herself. BB-8 stirs and casts a curious stare up at her, so when she keeps talking, she aims it at him. It feels less foolish to talk to him, even if he can’t possibly understand. “I don’t think it would be seen during the day by anybody outside the castle, but how can I tell how bright it is?”

The cat thumps his tail against the floorboards, then his head lolls back down, his interest in her words abandoned. 

Her first instinct is to go down to the cellars, but it’s too dark to go down there without having an initial source of light to see by. She needs a space which will be dark but shielded from the outside world.

Which is how she finds herself methodically searching the library for more of the secret nooks.

“Kylo and Ben both said there were more to be found,” she tells BB-8. “I bet I can find all of them, if I’m careful enough.”

She tugs at every book, going shelf by shelf, in case they will allow a bookcase to swing open and reveal a secret. Then she makes a sketch of the library floorplan in her notes, labeling the books she’s found and what she knows of the layout. Sure enough, she can see little pockets of space that aren’t accounted for.

One of them is right behind the bureau, in what looks like a bricked-up chimney breast. Now she just has to get into it. 

* * *

By the time dusk is beginning to fall, she’s ready to take the wall apart with whatever she can find in the workshop.

“There must be something that would let me prize the bricks out,” she says to a disinterested BB-8, who is having an argument with his own tail. She glances around guiltily, as if the library itself is listening to her. “Not that I want to do that, of course. I just want to get into this secret nook.”

She rolls off the top of the bureau, ready to head back to her chamber. She can only assume that no Kylo means no Ben tonight, but she’s not ready to give up hope just yet. After all, she’s spent nearly all day in here, so maybe she missed Ben’s return. He might come. That hope, that silvery little thread of faith which is anchored in her heart, keeps the enormity of another night alone from yawning in front of her.

It’s not like she’s already taken to talking to herself after two days alone or anything.

Rey yawns and stretches, then almost trips over BB-8 on her way out. She throws a hand against the library wall to steady herself. It almost yields beneath her in a way that brick is certainly not supposed to.

BB-8 chirps at her in curiosity as she pushes on the wall—on the particular brick she caught hold of—and a panel behind the desk starts to lever open. 

“Oh!”

It only reaches as high as Rey’s hips and isn’t much wider than her either, but as the panel swings wider she can see that it’s actually only made of wood with a thin facade of bricks applied to the front of it. Behind it, a hole yawns open, dark inside and not particularly welcoming. Rey drops to her knees, peering into it, and though the light isn’t brilliant, she’s able to see that it’s a windowless nook, set up with a reading bench much like the others. Once she’s through the wall, it opens up, with room to stand up in.

She’s wary about crawling inside—though it’s surprisingly unstuffy, considering it’s been shut up for who knows how long—because she’s sure the rats and spiders have had great fun inside it since it was last opened. However, rats and spiders are BB-8’s forte, and he creeps past her with no hesitation, apparently delighted to have found another dark space to hunt inside. 

She watches his tail swish, his eyes glint as he inspects the space and sniffs around. Then he leaps up onto the old bench and curls up.

This is what convinces her there’s nothing worth hunting inside, at least not for a cat. Perhaps whatever magic kept so much of the castle well preserved has also protected this space from infestations. She crawls in after BB-8, ensuring the panel remains propped open, and joins him on the padded seat.

It takes her own eyes a moment to adjust, but when they do she’s able to see the outline of an oil lamp bolted to the wall, and there’s a curious lattice panel set into one wall which she suspects is for ventilation. 

“This is perfect,” she whispers to BB-8. 

Perfect for secreting things away inside. Maybe Kylo knows about this nook, maybe he doesn’t. He doesn’t need to know she’s discovered it. But it’s also perfectly hidden from the outside world, and nobody could see the glow of an oil lamp from down in the fortress.

First things first, she puts BB-8 outside the little room and shuts the panel, trapping him outside. He gives an annoyed whine at being cast out, and she can hear him trying to scratch at the stone, but it’s for the best. She doesn’t want another living thing in here with her if this goes wrong.

Which it won’t. She’s read all she needs to. Kylo couldn’t explain this to her any more clearly than all her notes have compiled the principles for her—it’s just a variation on what she did with the window glass.

Settled on the bench, legs crossed together and palms resting upwards, she closes her eyes and empties her mind.

Light cannot be created. Light can only be fashioned from taking other energy and transforming it. Like burning wood to create light and warmth through fire.

So that’s what Rey does. She pulls on her own reserves, pulls on the energy around her, and she compresses it all into a ball a couple of inches above her palm.

When she opens her eyes, soft, white light glows and fills the space.

* * *

She wishes she could be happier about her accomplishment. It gives her so much scope to do more around the castle, in the places she hasn’t been able to venture before now. She can finally do more about her promise to Ben, to find a way out of here for both of them.

But as she lies in bed, the rags draped around her wrist rather than wrapped around her eyes—she’ll put the blindfold on if she hears him coming—it feels like a fruitless mission if he’s no longer here to be rescued.

She wishes she knew he was safe, even if she knows it cannot possibly be true. There is no safety in Snoke’s fortress, if that’s even where he is. 

Instead, she ties herself in knots with her own emotions. Ben has been gone too long, this time. She doesn’t dare to imagine what shape he will be in when Kylo brings him back.

And somehow, it feels like a rejection from Kylo. A punishment, even. She’d been doing so well, hadn’t she? Working hard, doing what Kylo expected. But maybe he really had grown tired of her constant needling, her jibes and insolence. Maybe this disappearance is a punishment, so she understands what it is like when he’s gone. So she will learn to appreciate his company.

Worse. Maybe it is a punishment, but not for that. What if—what if he has found out about Ben visiting her at night? She feels a chill the blankets cannot conquer at the thought, but it makes a horrible sense. Ben had said he’d make sure she had time to sleep when he left her that morning—and Kylo isn’t an idiot. If he’s figured out that Ben can leave his tower room at night and visit Rey, maybe Kylo’s taken him back to the fortress for good.

What if Rey never sees Ben again?

But her imagination finds even darker depths to plumb. What if it wasn’t Kylo who figured it out—what if it were Snoke himself? If Ben was taken down there and Snoke was easily able to peel thoughts of Rey from his mind—learning she was still alive, one prison swapped for another. If he has, then leaving her trapped in the castle would be an effective punishment for all of them—Ben unable to return to her, Kylo unable to rescue her, and Rey left to wither and decay, completely unaware the castle has become her tomb.

When sleep evades her this time, she stops trying to chase it. Instead, she gets out of bed, draping a spare blanket around her shoulders for warmth, and sets off to do something productive this time.

It’s a surprise to find BB-8 curled up outside her door, as if waiting for her to emerge. He makes a tiny squeak of surprise at seeing her but dutifully follows Rey across the courtyard, keeping her ankles warm with frequent brushes of his fur. She trusts his eyesight better than hers as they slink down the stairs and then up them again. It’s not as cool as Rey expected—it’s actually pleasantly warm out in the open, the thick stone walls of the keep ensuring the castle never truly heats up even after baking in the sun all day—but the blanket fends off that odd middle-of-the-night chill that always arises when departing a warm bed.

The library doesn’t resist her entry. She suspects she’s not the first clandestine visitor it’s received at odd hours of night. It’s transformed in the darkness, the sweet, musty smell of books and wood polish adding a surprising coziness. Though it’s always been a place of hush, the loudest noise being her own voice, now it feels like it has a quilt of silence draped over it. It feels comforting to Rey—more comforting than the silence of her bedchamber.

“What shall we read?” she murmurs to BB-8. “It doesn’t have to be about magic this time. We could read whatever we like.”

He doesn’t answer, and she casts the smallest little ball of light to allow her to read the titles as she passes by the stacks, shrouded under a corner of her blanket so it can’t be seen through the windows.

She picks a pile at random. Something about the history of the castle—yes, that might be useful if she’s trying to understand it and find a way out of it. A book about flowers, which is completely useless to her except she thinks she’ll like the pictures. And then, one of children’s stories, which is very worn despite not looking particularly old. Its bright cover is sticking out like it was haphazardly shelved, calling to be read again.

Her little nook waits for her, and she closes the panel after her this time, allowing BB-8 to remain inside with her. He seems content with this turn of events, and to her surprise, curls up in her lap when she settles herself down. He’s let her pet him before, but he’s never gotten so close, and her eyes sting a little as she smiles down at him.

As for the little glowing light—she pushes it into the wall lamp, knowing it’s not wise to try and sustain it while she reads. It’s easy to keep it going, once it’s been lit, but she doesn’t want to take the risk of falling asleep or lapsing in concentration and it going badly wrong. The lamp flickers to life, a little pungent at first but casting a lovely warm bloom for her to read by.

She opens the cover of the first book, and she begins.

* * *

The secret nook does have its downsides. When she wakes up, she’s entirely unsure of what time it is, because it is pitch black inside the space. At some point the lamp has burned itself out. All she knows is that her belly is complaining—and so is BB-8.

Besides that, she fell asleep slumped on the bench, and her neck is protesting as loudly as her belly.

Not daring to risk casting more light before eating, she feels her way out, blinking at the bright morning light when she pushes the panel open. She half expects to find Kylo on the other side, boots propped up on the bureau, waiting for her to emerge. But no. The library is as still and silent as it was when she arrived at the witching hour. 

She drops the stack of books on the bureau, and as she does so, the worn cover of the children’s book almost comes free of the spine. She manages to right it in time, but it flops open to reveal the inside cover.

There’s an inscription. Two, in fact. The first, in neat, official calligraphy:  _ Presented to Her Royal Majesty Queen Leia on the birth of her son and heir, from the Guild of Master Printers. _ The second, in a childish script, attempting to imitate the original penmanship:  _ Property of Prince Ben.  _

Seeing that startles her more than almost dropping the book.  _ Prince _ Ben? Surely not. She’d forgotten the name of the lost prince, but here it is in blue ink. And it just so happens to be the name of her fellow prisoner, the man kept locked up in the same castle the lost prince should be ruling over.

She shakes her head, trying to chase her trepidation away. “Plenty of people are called Ben,” she says to BB-8. “Royal names are always popular when people are naming their babies.”

It’s true. Rey had known a handful of Bens in Jakku who’d been born after the prince and named for him. Much like there’d been a glut of old men called Anakin, before the war took most of them. Her Ben was probably named for the prince too. She laughs at her only silliness as she walks away from the bureau. Imagine—a prince. Interested in her. She’s been reading too many fairy stories.

Breakfast is eaten out in the courtyard, enjoying the last of the morning sun, and since she figures it’s so close to noon, she has lunch too. The apples are fat and heavy in the tree, and with the last of the cherries gone, she hopes it won’t be long before the apples are ready to harvest in their place.

It would have been nice to bring the book about flowers outside. She’d enjoyed looking at the illustrations, where each bloom was as big as her hand, even if they weren’t that size in real life. There weren’t any flowers in the castle—barely any weeds, really—and they’d make some of the bare stone look less stark. 

She’d found seed packets in the back of the pantry, obviously once used for the overgrown tangled patch that makes up the kitchen garden, and while she knows what the vegetable names are, it had been a delight to match the flower seed labels up with the illustrations in her book. Calendula and chamomile, marigolds and borage; she could imagine the courtyard once being dotted with pots of color.

She allows her eyes to drift shut, tipping her head back to drench herself in the sunlight. It’s a poor replacement for the warmth she feels around Ben, but she’ll take whatever she can get right now. She lets her mind drift back to the way his mouth had felt against hers—the taste of him, a little minty. How his hands had felt, one palm spanning the entirety of her lower back, the other lightly resting between her shoulder blades. He’d held her delicately, like she was something precious. His hair had been silky between her fingers, thick and soft and warm. All of him, so warm, like curling up beside a fireplace. 

The way his tongue had slid against hers; she’d never known that was a thing. There was so much she didn’t know, really. Somewhere along the way she’d discovered—with disgust—how babies were made. And then, when she was older, exactly what took place in Unkar Plutt’s call house. What men—and some women—would pay for. Beyond a form of stress relief in the sanctuary of her home, where she’d touched herself in ways that helped her sleep, she’d never seen the appeal.

The mechanics, she understood. The desire to do it, had never been lit within her before. She wishes she could say she’d never understood it before Ben, but her first dreams were of Kylo. She’d noticed him in the fortress and her imagination had only grown more insistent. But with Ben—kissing could lead easily to more. She’d never thought she’d really want more. Not even if her imagination took flight after a glimpse of Kylo’s body. But with Ben, she’d felt shivery and hot in equal measure when he’d kissed her—she’d liked the way his hand felt against her, and wished it had been on her bare skin. His kisses had left her breathless and wanting and a little—sticky, if she’s truthful with herself. She wishes she knew more about what came next. She wishes she knew what it felt like for Ben to touch her instead.

When she heads back inside, her skin is flushed from more than the sun. BB-8 doesn’t follow her for once. Rey decides she’s going to read in one of the sunlit nooks instead of at the bureau—she just doesn’t know what.

As if the library has plucked her interests from her mind, the first shelf she comes to contains a row of books about exactly what she’s been pondering. She takes them all down, then crosses to her nook, and shuts herself away from the world.

* * *

Later, when she has once again satisfied herself that Ben will not be coming to her, she fashions a hammock out of a blanket in the dark little nook, and takes the books inside with her. When she dreams this time, it’s less vague. Ben’s warmth beneath her hands, and in her imagination his torso is similar to Kylo’s—broad and strong. When they kiss, his hands don’t stay on her waist. Long, graceful fingers slide upwards to cup her breast, her breath catching as his thumb strokes over her. Somehow, she’s astride him, slowly grinding her hips down on his thighs, and his firm fingers—less calloused than her own—slide between her legs.

The knowledge she’s acquired from the books helps her mind supply other details. What lay between his legs—how it would feel inside her—how to move over him so it felt good for both of them.

She wakes up in the darkness, drenched in sweat and more, on the edge of a precipice. It only takes a few quick strokes of her own fingers to fall over, then to tumble back to sleep. But he’s still there in her dreams, and she’s still desperate to hold him, her hands closing around wisps of smoke instead.

* * *

Rey can’t really explain why she doesn’t use her days to go down and explore the below ground levels of the castle now she’s capable of wielding light. Maybe it’s that the library feels like a sanctuary for her. Maybe she’s afraid that she will find a route out, and will have to face the prospect of abandoning Ben and seizing her chance at escape. Maybe she’s afraid that she’ll learn Kylo is telling the truth, and it doesn’t matter how hard she searches, she can’t get out of here without his say so.

She doesn’t spend all her time in the library. She also spends a few hours piecing the rest of the windows back together. She likes to see how the art changed over the centuries, from being fairly crude and clumsily made, to being as exquisitely crafted as an oil painting by a master. It’s how she’s able to tell that  _ Breha’s last procession _ is the most recent in the collection, and  _ Ezra slays the dragon _ is much older, though far from the oldest. It doesn’t date from the time of King Ezra, because as the books she’s been reading tell her, the current castle was built over the bones of the original castle, made much larger when the power of the kingdom ascended. The books hint that there is more down there than just dungeons—Rey supposes the tunnels may be that old.

She doesn’t purposefully keep track of the days, but one morning she opens the pantry and realizes that Kylo has been gone an entire week. She knows this because her stack of food has rapidly depleted. She’s gotten used to having dairy food brought by Kylo—milk and cream and butter—but that’s all gone now, and if she hadn’t eaten it, it would have gone rancid. But there are gaps on the pantry shelves that aren’t ordinarily there, and while what she has stored will last her some time—

What if Kylo doesn’t come back? At least not until the food runs out?

She’s been a fool. 

Rey’s plumper than she ever used to be. Despite the way Kylo trains her, her ribs are now hidden below a healthy layer of fat. She’s taken advantage of all the food on offer and she’s no longer as gaunt as she once was, even if she knows she’s still plenty slim by the standards of many people. By Jakku standards, though, she might as well be a pampered housecat. And it’s by Jakku standards she should have been living. Food isn’t for gorging herself on—it’s for meting out, for hoarding in case of emergency. A little hunger from day to day won’t harm her, not compared to the longer hunger of no food for several days at a time. She’s grown too used to Kylo, too reliant on him, and she’s now facing the prospect that if he doesn’t return, she’ll be left trapped like a rat in a cage to starve.

It won’t do.

The food in the pantry would ordinarily last her a few weeks, but she knows that if she is careful, if she ekes it out, she could make it last over a month. Possibly two. But she needs another source of food—even rats would do, if BB-8 could be persuaded to share his victims.

She turns to the library and the workshop, tearing her way through a handful of gardening manuals, then seeking out the most appropriate tools. She tears out the weeds from the kitchen garden, turning the soil over as best she can, and fetches the seeds from the back of the pantry. They’re old, probably too old to take root. Besides, it’s the wrong time of the year to be growing anything—even cabbages or cauliflowers might not survive the winter if it hits hard.

But what choice does she have?

And if nothing else, Rey has her magic. 

The books are there, when she searches for them, muttering under her breath. How to coax life into seeds, to help them grow quicker and faster than they would ordinarily. How to protect them from slugs and snails and other pests. Within an afternoon she’s got the patch planted and sprouted, and she hopes it will be enough.

* * *

That night, even the books can’t soothe her or distract her enough to sleep—Rey finds herself staring at the wall, at a spot just below the wall lamp. It is smooth and unobstructed, and the bricks should give way to paler strips if she were to scrape it. It would work well as somewhere to count the passing days.

The hammock felt cozy for the last few nights, but tonight it’s a reminder of things she’d like to forget. She doesn’t even have Kylo’s cowl to let her savor the scent of another human being.

Mostly the hammock reminds her of Jakku, where it had been the safest option for sleeping—she could see if bugs or rodents had tried to invade before she climbed in with them, and its elevated position kept most of them out anyway. She’d never felt as vulnerable as she did on the ground. Now, the hammock reminds her of all her lonely nights in Jakku, when she had nobody else to look after her except herself.

Ben had changed that. Kylo, too, in his own way. But once more, Rey’s days and nights are too silent. 

She’s known loneliness before. All her days in Jakku had passed in a monotony of minimal contact. She’d touched bones and metal more than she’d touched other human beings, and she never remembers hugging anyone, or anyone touching her in kindness. Human hands were only a source of pain to Rey before she arrived in the castle. Even still, that loneliness was nothing compared to the past few days. She can’t just march herself down to the market place and speak to a random stranger, annoy Plutt, or attempt to barter with one of his underlings over access to the well. She only has herself to speak to. Even the library doesn’t answer her like another person would.

What a pathetic existence she’s led so far, to be missing the presence of a brute like Kylo. But it’s true that he’s shown the most kindness of anyone in her life, except for Ben. Even her family had seen fit to abandon her for their cause, and she has no soft or happy recollections to make her inclined to think of them fondly. What memories she’s regained of her parents are still wispy and fragmented, so vague they might as well be remnants of dreams or daydreams. They’re not real to her—how can they be, when she doesn’t even remember her mother’s face? Her father’s smile? What their home had been like?

She’d thought herself over her anger at them, but it rekindles as she curls up and stares at the ceiling of her little alcove. She knows better than she ever did how dangerous Snoke is. She understands, far more than she could in Jakku, why it was important for people to stand against Snoke, to try and prevent his invasion. 

Yet, the anger still burns within her, and she’s not sure anything could ever truly extinguish it. Why did her mother have to go fight too? Why both parents—why her grandfather as well? Surely one of them could have remained in their little house in Takodana to look after Rey. She knows they’d have had to go into hiding, to keep her use of magic secret, but that would have been so much easier than abandoning her to the mercies of Unkar Plutt. Especially given they’d all died anyway, their deaths apparently useless. They’d failed in their mission, and in doing so, they’d failed Rey twice over.

She lets the flame of anger billow inside her, better than her panic and her sadness. It gives her an insight into Kylo, in a way. While she still doesn’t know exactly what it is that fuels his anger—it’s something to do with Snoke, but there’s more, far more, and she never expects him to reveal it to her—she understands that he doesn’t let it consume him. He channels it. It’s a fuel for his magic, and while it makes his power raw and unstable in many ways, he’s never lacking for something to burn when he needs to.

Not that she has much sympathy left for him. He’s abandoned her, too. Hadn’t he as good as promised to take care of her, then disappeared? She can’t rely on anybody except herself.

Maybe she could learn from him. She’s plenty of her own anger, if she needs to.

Yes. Maybe, rather than lying here, pitiful wretch that she is, she should turn her anger to a more useful task. She’s put it off long enough. Tomorrow, she’s taking her bitterness down to the cellars, and she’s burning it bright enough to find her way out of here.

* * *

Despite her vow not to squander food, Rey eats a hearty breakfast, a big bowl of oatmeal. She’s not an idiot—if she wants to sustain light, she needs to make sure she has plenty of energy to burn.

There are drawings in the library that show the layout of the castle, but they certainly don’t show any secret passages or tunnels under the hill, not that she expected them to. Still, she memorizes them as best as she can, deciding to explore directly under the keep first. 

The cellars are accessed through a trapdoor in the kitchens, and she props it open to peer down the steps it covers up. Like everything in the castle, they are eerily clear of cobwebs despite the years of mis-use. She descends the stairs gingerly, straining her ears to absorb the darkness. There’s no scuttling, no crawling. Only quiet.

She’s brought a lamp with her, found in one of the chests in her chamber, and lights it with a burst of magic. It should be enough to burn for hours.

She spends the day exploring the cellars, which are mostly empty, except for some dusty wine bottles and wooden kindling. A passageway runs down one wall, opening out into each cellar along the way, all lined up alongside each other like a chain. Despite much prodding and poking, she finds no secret doorways—not even seemingly bricked-up ones like Kylo had opened in the fortress. The cellars only appear to be cellars.

Tomorrow, then. Into the dungeons.

She brings a bottle of wine with her on her way out, just to see if it will help her sleep. Everything else in this place seems to be well preserved—but when she pours herself out a cup, it is sour, like vinegar. Just her luck.

She pours the rest down the drains and consoles herself with a heel of bread.

* * *

The dungeons are not so simple. They’re underneath the wing that the library sits in, squatting below the old garrison, and they’re nowhere as orderly as the cellars. Her lantern glints off black stone, and she can hear distant dripping, like she once did when she followed Kylo here from the fortress.

It gives her hope. She’d never known what it was she heard dripping, but if she follows the sound, maybe it will lead her to a way into the tunnels. All she has to do is find a door into the secret passages—one door. It doesn’t even have to be a big door, because she’ll find a way of opening it, of getting through.

She walks, draped in the thickest blanket she could find. It’s truly drafty down here, and she hopes that’s because air moves, blowing through tunnels out of the castle. The passageways she walks through are rough hewn, chiseled straight out of the bedrock of the castle hill, and she passes by and through rooms that have been created in the same way. Doors stand open, their twisted and corroded metal no longer as imposing as they would have been to anybody trapped behind them. 

With all her focus on the dripping water, she doesn’t pay much attention to the route she takes, and in the end she’s disappointed to find the water is just a leaky pipe, trickling down a wall to create the most pathetic stream Rey has ever encountered. It’s been leaking so long that it’s worn a little rivulet into the stone, and when it reaches the ground it runs away into nothing, spreading out into the cracked earth and seeping in.

Except now she has absolutely no idea how to get back out. She took too many forked paths, went through too many rooms with multiple doors leading out of them, and within five minutes she’s hopelessly turned around. Within ten, she’s back at the stream, and in another ten, she’s staring at it again.

She’s going in circles.

Of all the things she’d fretted over, starving to death down in the dungeons while the pantry was still adequately stocked was not one of them.

She starts humming, trying to make the space sound less hollow and echoey as she attempts to retrace her steps. If she took a left last time, then she should take a right this time. If she took the door on the opposite wall before, now she needs to take another door instead.

But she can still hear dripping water, and she knows it won’t be long before she ends up back where she started.

And that’s before something brushes up against her ankle.

She yelps, dropping the lantern, and only a burst of instinct stops it from hitting the ground. She freezes it, then snatches it out of mid-air before it falls onto the stone and smashes to pieces.

BB-8 chirps at her in greeting, his tail swishing and thwacking against her ankle once more.

“Idiot cat,” she tells him furiously, but she knows her anger is at herself more than anything. For what it’s worth, BB-8 seems oblivious to her frustration, and he turns around to trot away.

With nothing better to do, she follows him. It’s the right thing to do—within minutes they’ve reached the bottom of the stairs back up to the rest of the castle.

He perches on a step, laving his paws and causing a hazard to anyone trying to use the stairs. She gives him a thorough scratch behind the ears anyway, and carefully clambers over him to make a break for sunlight.

She needs a much better plan to tackle exploring the dungeons if she doesn’t want to end up being BB-8’s next meal.

* * *

She retreats to the library, to the books with the plans of the castle. She even tries to take one with her. When she’s unable to yank the book across the threshold, she takes to bargaining with the library to let her have it.

“Oh, come on! You know it’s not leaving the castle. You know I’ll take good care of it and bring it right back.”

But when she tries to step outside with it in her hand, the door slams in her face.

She does the next best thing and makes a careful sketch of the dungeon maps, which the library has no problems taking with her. By then, evening is beginning to settle in, and she’s wary of going back down tonight.

Yes, the amount of darkness above ground makes no difference of how dark it is below ground. No, she’s not expecting to meet with anybody down there. The dungeons have been empty for so long, the worst she’s going to find is bones, and Rey’s seen plenty of bones in her lifetime. A few more aren’t going to hurt her.

But she has to admit, the dungeons had chilled her in a way that had nothing to do with the actual temperature. It had been cold—the kind of cold she knows comes from the permanent absence of any heat source—but it wasn’t only that. The space had a presence, much like the library does. Where the cellars had just felt like rooms, a place where very little had ever happened other than people going to and fro to collect and store things, the dungeons had soaked up centuries of emotions. Bad emotions. Not the peace and curiosity of the library. People were kept prisoner down there—maybe even tortured. All of that anguish had soaked into the stone like blood and seeped back out as she passed by.

So while it won’t make any difference whether she goes down tonight or waits for the morning, she decides to wait. And she takes herself to the tub in her refresher, filling it with hot water and some sweet-scented oil she found bottled in one of the cellars, soaking for as long as she can before the water turns cold and her skin has pruned up like a raisin. In the end, it makes little difference, and the scent of anguish clings to her skin like she’s bathed in that instead.

BB-8 is curled up on her bed when she emerges, as if he’s sensed they won’t be visiting the library tonight, and he doesn’t even stir when she climbs underneath the blankets beside him. He snuggles into her side, a warm weight, and purrs at just the right volume to lull her to sleep.

* * *

When she wakes, there’s a weight across her chest, the sound of soft, snuffly breathing beside her ear.

_ Ben _ . Ben’s returned!

Forgetting her promise to never look at his face, she cracks one eye open, eager to see his strong arm curled around her.

Instead, she’s treated to a disgruntled snort in her ear, and is whacked in the cheek by an orange tail.

Her happiness abruptly soured, she prepares for the day with tears stinging her eyes.

Her mood has barely improved when she takes her new map down to the dungeon. She’s restless, and miserable. Even the cat has abandoned her today, eating the food she left for him and disappearing into the higher floors of the keep without a backwards glance after she rudely awoke him.

She can’t hear the dripping water today, only her own footsteps echoing, the soft padding of her boot soles making quiet impacts on the ground. At first, she wants to follow a very specific path, exploring each section of the dungeons methodically and marking off where she has been on her map. Instead she finds herself drawn in a specific direction again—not by the map, or by sound, but by magic. She can feel it down here, a quiet, smoldering presence underneath all the anguish.

And isn’t magic exactly what she’s looking for?

This time, she does at least have the sense to mark her path on the map, so she can find her own way out. She can’t rely on BB-8 to come rescue her if she gets herself turned around.

She traipses through more squat little rooms with bars set into them, rusted doors standing open and waiting to trap their next prey. She doesn’t go into them to investigate, but as she passes by, she can see hooks set into the walls, and the lantern light glints off of metal chains, draping down the walls, bereft at being empty for so long. Compared to the rest of the castle, this is a horrible place. She doesn’t want to know what they used to do down here.

Even so, the rooms continue to offer her glimpses of their former uses. One of the bigger rooms doesn’t have one of those metal doors, or bars, or chains. Instead, there’s an overturned metal table lying in the middle of it. The table is large enough to lie a man down on, and its surface is oddly stained. Channels have been carved into the floor, and those channels all slope towards a drain. 

Rey couldn’t step foot inside that room if she wanted to. Not if she didn’t want to be crippled by centuries of pain, channeled into those furrows in the ground as much as the blood they’d once flowed with.

She rushes past the room after her first curious glance, following that heady pulse of magic instead. It leads her towards one corner of the castle, and soon it’s apparent she’s heading down a corridor with a dead end. She moves quickly, heart thumping against her ribs—surely it won’t be a dead end at all? The magic itself doesn’t feel ancient, even though it’s old and a little faded—another good sign that any exit has been used recently.

Sure enough, the passageway ends against bare stone. But it is bare stone, as best she can tell—there’s no mark of a bricked-up doorway, or anything to suggest that it is anything other than very, very solid. She lays a hand on it, then carefully sets the lantern at her feet and presses both palms flat against it, eyes closed, listening intently. Her hands fall away. If there is magic inside this wall, she can’t feel it.

No, the magic isn’t coming from this part of the wall. It’s coming from the closed door next to it.

This door is different to all the others she’s encountered. It doesn’t have any bars set into it. It has a perfectly ordinary looking knob, without a keyhole, and she’s astonished to find that when she reaches out for it, the handle turns beneath her fingers.

Not that she wants it to. One graze of her skin on the metal and she connects with the presence and it’s—

It’s not evil, exactly. Hungry, maybe. Ravenous, and it’s excited by her presence, reaching out to try and touch her, but its touch is like the raspy lick of BB-8’s tongue—barbed and slimy and not at all what she wants. Worse, it’s cold. She yanks her hand away from the door, but it chases her, that feeling, not wanting to let go now it knows she’s there.

“Leave me alone!” she yells, like it will make a difference, but she can feel it creeping around her like tendrils. It’s been the undercurrent to all the anguish she’s been feeling since she ventured down here yesterday, getting under skin without her even noticing, and though she knows there’s something vitally important on the other side of that door—maybe even her route out of here—she can’t face it. She can’t.

Instead, she runs back to the sanctuary of the library.

* * *

“Is there a demon down in the dungeons?”

It’s the only thing that makes sense to her. Not that she’s come across much talk of demons in the books she’s been reading, but they exist in stories, don’t they? Like dragons used to exist before King Ezra slayed the last one? Maybe that’s why Kylo is so confident she won’t find her way out of the castle—because the one and only exit that doesn’t require magic is guarded by a demon who will never, ever let her get past it.

Her questions rings out in the silence of the library, and she does not receive an answer.

It takes two days before she musters her courage to try again. This time, she takes what makes her feel safe—her staff. 

The sword Kylo gave her rests next to it on top of the chest in her chamber, but she’s not confident enough with it yet. And this morning, something about its own chilly magic sets her teeth on edge. So she straps her staff to her back, like old times, and sets off for the dungeon, ready to face whatever lies behind that door.

Maybe being eaten by a demon is better than slowly starving to death anyway.

She marches down the keep staircase, pleased to see that the little patch of garden is sprouting nicely. After breakfast, she heads for the dungeons, hands empty of the lantern. Today, she will rely on her own light. She needs her hands free if she has to battle anything.

That awful ravenous yearning hasn’t subsided, and now she feels it like a whisper in the back of her head, urging her to come to it. 

“I warn you,” she mutters, “I won’t make a very tasty meal at all.”

She creeps on muffled feet back to the door, and places her bare hand on the handle. It’s cold—even colder than she expected it to be, and she closes her eyes, gathering her courage before she turns it. The light flickers above her palm, but doesn’t go out.

The door hinges creak as she pushes it open, and when she steps inside, she’s both relieved and disappointed. There’s no demon—and no other door out of here. Instead, she steps into a small room, cluttered with stacked, dusty furniture and boxes of unseen contents.

Despite that, she can still feel that insidious magic whispering to her. Somehow it’s embedded itself into this room, like poison corked inside a bottle.

She should go. She knows, instinctively, there’s no path out of the castle through here. None of the walls are bare enough to offer one. Yet curiosity drags her further inside. Despite the layer of dust, the mustiness tickling the inside of her nose and feeling heavy in her lungs, the furniture seems in good condition. More than that—it’s exquisite. Expensive, even compared to what she’s found remaining in the rest of the castle.

There’s a gilded bureau, and a trunk whose lid isn’t fully shut, giving her a glimpse of the heavy capes inside. She lifts the edge of a sheet to peek at the chair beneath it—it’s fashioned from metal, it seems. No, not just metal. Gold. It’s not a particularly large or ornate chair, and she can see where the soft metal has worn down over time, yet it might be the most expensive thing she’s ever come across.

It’s a throne. It has to be.

And then, when she opens another chest by a crack, jewels glimmer at her from inside. Heavy scepters, and ornate livery collars studded with rubies and sapphires, and even—yes, that is a crown. Rey’s mouth waters at all the riches, thinking of how much she could feast on all that she’s found here, if she bargained it away.

Not that she will. She understands now. These are the royal treasures. These are all that’s left of the royal family of Alderaan, shoved in a dark, dusty room in the furthest corner of the castle. If they haven’t been removed from the place, it’s because they can’t be. And, much as Rey has never found much reason to hold the deposed royal family in much regard, nor is she inclined to steal from them, even if she could. It’s one thing to take things from fallen warriors, out in the desert. It’s another to steal from their own home.

And of course, it’s hard to take things from under the watchful eye of Queen Leia herself. A portrait is propped up on one wall, framed in bronze. Rey only recognizes her from other pictures she’s seen, in the library, and out in the world beyond. She seems to have had a sad face, even when this was painted, her dark eyes large and haunting, her hair swept into elaborate braids around her head and burnished by the candlelight she was painted in. She’s young, barely older than Rey, and her belly swells with the first hint of her son. One hand rests atop her bump, protectively, and Rey can see fierce determination in the set of her mouth.

Underneath all of this melancholy, Rey can still feel the thrum of menace. It comes from one corner of the room, where a set of boxes rest atop a trunk, and she decides she doesn’t want to look at them. Maybe Snoke managed to corrupt some treasures while he was in the process of looting the castle. Maybe time alone in this dark, silent room has led a magical presence to decay into this hollow, hungry echo.

It doesn’t matter. She hasn’t found what she came for.

She’ll keep searching elsewhere.

Rey turns to leave, to close the door and shut this room away once more, all of its sad and tainted things better hidden down here than dragged back up to the empty remains of the castle. But as she steps over the threshold, something else catches her eye.

It’s another picture frame, but it’s set down at floor level, half-hidden behind one of the chests. Intrigued, she steps back into the room, dragging the frame out with her free hand, but it’s too large for her to lift even with both hands free. If it were on the wall it would be two-thirds her size.

The canvas is ruined. It looks like somebody took a sword to it, slashing at the center repeatedly, so it hangs out of the frame in shreds. Rey can see the outer edges of the original painting, but not what lay in the middle. It’s easy to guess what’s missing based on what she can still see.

On one side, Queen Leia stares out. She’s older, faint lines captured around her mouth and eyes. One of the crowns rests on her head, a fur-lined cape wrapped around her shoulders. She looks stern, less sad, but there’s also a hint of mischief in those lines. 

On the other side stands a man with far too much mischief in his face. He’s taller than the queen, his face clean-shaven, his hair a lighter shade of brunette. He’s handsome, even with middle age creeping onto his skin. The hand casually resting upon Leia's shoulder must be his. Nothing about him seems regal—he’s too casual, too rebellious. His posture says “this is all too formal for my liking.”

So. This must be Han Solo, the queen’s consort. The man Kylo Ren is alleged to have run through with his sword in the outer courtyard.

Rey has heard many stories of Kylo’s misdeeds over the years, and even witnessed his brutality, but nothing is quite as confronting as the face of this man. She’s heard many whispers about Han Solo over the years—about how much he was liked by the people of the kingdom, with his easy charm and humor. Whoever painted him was truly talented, because Rey can feel every drop of that charm just by looking at him. He’s likable, charismatic.

Dead.

As for the missing center—it doesn’t take much to figure out who should be there. This is a family portrait, with the prince cut out. She tries to gather the shreds, to hold them up together and see what he would have looked like. Surely, he must have been handsome, the child of these two people. But all she can see is glimpses of him—an eye, solemn and dark, the curve of his lip, pink and firm, the brush of lustrous dark hair on a broad shoulder.

Prince Ben. The boy who’d written that inscription in the book in the library had been the young man captured onto this canvas. The anxiety she’d felt upon seeing that inscription comes crawling back. 

Her attention returns to the fragments of face she’s able to see. She’s never seen  _ her _ Ben, not with her eyes, but she’s sure she committed a map of his face to memory through touch alone. That high cheekbone—she’s slid her fingers up its high path. That mouth—it feels familiar to her because she’s spent long hours kissing it.

Prince Ben  _ is _ her Ben.

Why else is Ben such a prized prisoner? Why else has he been kept alive so long? Snoke is keeping him for some other purpose—and just like this room of relics, Rey can’t help feeling it’s tied to the magic of the castle. Snoke couldn’t destroy the throne, or take the castle as his own. Maybe he couldn’t kill the heir to the throne, just like Rey can’t take whatever she likes out of the library. Better to keep the boy stashed in the castle, hidden away from the world and thought dead, for whatever reason Snoke is keeping him alive.

A prince. Rey has been kissing a prince. Rey is in love with a prince.

Oh, that sends her reeling, stumbling back from the picture and almost crashing into the chest in the corner, the one adorned with the poisoned relics. 

Because she  _ is _ in love with Ben. She’s in love with the very core of him, the way his spirit feels when she’s close to him. Kissing him was nice—wondrous—but she’d love him if they never touched at all. She doesn’t need to see his face to know that what she feels is true.

She loves Ben, and yet she spends her days politely entertaining Kylo’s company. The man keeping them both prisoner, but who inflicts real suffering on Ben. The man who ruthlessly killed Ben’s father. The man who took her prisoner and locked her up here, denied her the right to determine her own life. She lets Kylo into her dreams, where she does obscene things with him, things she never dreams of doing with sweet, gentle Ben. She’s even pitied Kylo.

It has to stop. Kylo isn’t her friend, or her mentor. Kylo is a monster. Whatever his plans are for her, they would be a betrayal to Ben, regardless of how Ben might feel about Rey. 

_ Yes _ , a voice whispers in the back of her head, quicksilver and cold.  _ He is a monster and you should hate him. _

She doesn’t know what she’s doing down in the dungeons. She shouldn’t be trying to escape from the castle behind Kylo’s back—she needs to confront him. 

_ You should kill him, _ the voice suggests.  _ He can’t pretend to care about you, then abandon you like he has. Two weeks, all alone. _

_ Monster _ .

The word reverberates in her mind, an energy building. Kylo’s energy—he’s approaching. He’s returned to the castle and she can feel all of his thunder and fire storming towards her.

She pulls her staff free, channels her anger—just like he would—and goes out to meet him. It’s time to free herself, once and for all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on [Tumblr](https://cellar-darlings.tumblr.com/) for a teaser of chapter sixteen on November 14th! If I remember this time. Sometimes I suck.


	17. Chapter Sixteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo’s almost given up hope before he senses Rey in the dungeons. Her presence is muffled by the stone, like a bright star hidden behind clouds, but he’s able to follow her trail. Feeling her, even distantly, is a balm to his own soul after two weeks without her. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed her before that first brush of her magic. It feels like the times she’s applied soothing bacta to his wounds, but without that first sting of discomfort. Healing, without the hurt, his soul humming a happy little note at her nearness.
> 
> He’ll never do anything so foolish as leaving her again.
> 
> But as he strides closer, not even attempting to mask himself or the pounding of his boots on the stone, he can feel a discordant note thrumming from her direction. She’s unhappy, but it’s more than that. She doesn’t resonate with the same sweetness she usually does, as if she’s a harp string half a tone out of tune.
> 
> It becomes apparent, the closer he draws, exactly where she is. And when he figures it out, all the anxiety he’d felt beforehand that she might have escaped comes washing back tenfold.
> 
> She’s in the room of treasures. With Anakin’s artefacts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to another chapter that's nearly 10k long! Will I ever learn to be succinct? Magic 8 ball says don't count on it.

Kylo’s almost given up hope before he senses Rey in the dungeons. Her presence is muffled by the stone, like a bright star hidden behind clouds, but he’s able to follow her trail. Feeling her, even distantly, is a balm to his own soul after two weeks without her. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed her before that first brush of her magic. It feels like the times she’s applied soothing bacta to his wounds, but without that first sting of discomfort. Healing, without the hurt, his soul humming a happy little note at her nearness.

He’ll never do anything so foolish as leaving her again.

But as he strides closer, not even attempting to mask himself or the pounding of his boots on the stone, he can feel a discordant note thrumming from her direction. She’s unhappy, but it’s more than that. She doesn’t resonate with the same sweetness she usually does, as if she’s a harp string half a tone out of tune.

It becomes apparent, the closer he draws, exactly where she is. And when he figures it out, all the anxiety he’d felt beforehand that she might have escaped comes washing back tenfold.

She’s in the room of treasures. With Anakin’s artefacts.

What has she found?

It doesn’t take long for him to find out. He’s barely rounded the corner to the path downstairs when she comes rushing out into the passageway, staff in hand, teeth bared in a grimace. 

“Monster!” she yells, and only his reflexes protect him from her first blow. She swings and he catches the staff on instinct, his ears ringing with shock at her mood. His back sharply protests the sudden movement.

He brought no weapon with him, his sword abandoned in the courtyard. It’s not like he expected her to attack him like this. Not after all this time.

Still. It’s not like her battle cry is baseless.

“You called?” he asks, trying to sound dry. Trying to inject some humor into a situation which only makes him want to weep.

She doesn’t laugh, and he can feel it: Anakin’s corrupting influence lies over her, an oily scum over her being.

“You killed him,” she accuses, and though she tries to swing at him again, he plucks the staff clean out of her hands and steps backwards, out of her reach. 

“You’ll need to be more specific,” he replies, keeping moving backwards. He has to—Rey keeps coming, apparently uncaring that she has no weapon to attack him with. She hadn’t hought to bring Anakin’s sword with her from her chamber.

He can only be thankful about that. That sword in her hand, so close to Anakin’s lingering, malevolent influence—things would be going a lot worse for him now if she had a blade on her.

“Han Solo,” she spits. “You killed Han Solo.”

It’s a sharp knife to the heart. She’s clearly seen the family portrait, the one Snoke had once bade Kylo slice himself out of.“That’s hardly news.”

“And what have you done to Ben?”

The name drops from her lips, and he comes to a standstill. His back has hit rock—his hiss of pain muffled by his mask—but he couldn’t have moved even if there’d been nothing to prevent him. Static fills his head. Has she—

“Ben?” he echoes.

“Prince Ben.” Even as she says it, her eyes widen. She’s forgotten, in her rage, that Ben is meant to be a secret. And here she is, about to accuse Kylo of—what, exactly? “Where is he?”

He knows that’s not what she intended to ask. He’s sure she was about to accuse him of taking Ben away to torture him in his absence. But she’s remembered, even through the fog of fury, not to betray Ben like this.

Even if she has finally figured out Ben’s full identity.

“That’s not your concern,” he tells her stiffly. He needs to get her out of here, away from Anakin’s influence, so they might have a rational conversation about things—if that’s possible. If she hasn’t been twisted to hate him completely by now.

“It is,” she insists. “It’s everyone’s concern, isn’t it?”

“You’re wrong. It’s only Snoke’s business. Nobody else’s.”

His words have the desired effect. She yanks the staff back into her waiting hand before he’s able to guard against it, and the waft of magic she does it with carries Anakin’s sulfuric reek. She lets out another battle cry, raising her weapon to strike again, and he takes the opportunity to flee.

His longer legs and greater knowledge of the castle means he’s easily able to outpace her, and she has limited range to strike within the narrow passages. It’s the only way he’s able to stay ahead of her, uninjured, and sprint to the top of the steps without her catching up. He keeps going, through the mess hall, and out into the courtyard, where he calls his sword to him before she gets any bright ideas about using that against him too.

It doesn’t matter anyway. As soon as she follows him outside, it’s as if the spell falls away. She stumbles, blinking around at the sudden light, and shakes her head as if she’s trying to clear water out of her ears.

“What—” She frowns down at her staff, then tosses it away from her. “What was that?”

“The influence of twisted magic.”

His back is damp. At first he thinks sweat, but then a lick of pain assures him that he’s reopened some of his wounds.

Her mouth sets in a tight line. She nods. “You’re back, then.”

She’s still on edge—he can see it in the tightness of her shoulders, the way she’s regarding him with suspicion. She might not want to kill him when left to her own devices, but he’s sure she hasn’t purged the image of Han Solo from her memory. It’s quite a thing to see the man’s face up close. He manages to charm people even after his death. Kylo’s sure he’d have made a big impression on Rey if he were still around.

And how he manages to be jealous of a man who’s been dead for over a decade, he’ll never understand. But then, Han always had an easy way with people. Ben was a disappointment to Han for many reasons, and his own awkwardness and reticence was one of them.

Though nothing could have been quite so disappointing as dying at Ben’s hands.

Rey is watching him, waiting for a response. 

“My mission is complete,” he tells her, hoping she won’t ask for more information. He’s not sure he could spin a convincing lie with her staring at him like that. The web of Anakin’s influence still lies over her—she hasn’t completely shaken it free.

She doesn’t ask for details. “Did you bring food?”

“Plenty.”

“Good.” She picks up the staff, tucking it back into her shoulder holster, and turns her back on him. “I’ll be in the library.”

He’s left watching her giving him the cold shoulder, marching back inside and away from him. It’s not the greeting he was expecting after being away from her for this long.

But then, if he wasn’t expecting this, what was he? It’s no less than he deserves.

* * *

He leaves her to stew all afternoon. She has every right to her anger, and so he cannot impose himself on her now that he’s seen fit to return. He sees now how truly selfish he’s been. The garden bed in the courtyard has been carefully tended, with shoots higher than they ought to have grown in the two weeks he’s been gone. When he goes into the pantry to put away the food he’s brought with him, he realizes just how much is left that ought to have been eaten by now.

No wonder her cheek had seemed sharper than he remembered.

He’s done this to her, and it only reminds him of what a self-absorbed wretch he is. He hadn’t considered what his disappearance would truly do to her. Clearly she’s had plenty of time to spend in the library, teaching herself what she needs to know in his absence. Perhaps the library has been a better teacher than he has. It wouldn’t be difficult.

He prepares a meal for her in the evening, bringing it to the library, but does nothing more than knock and leave it outside the door for her to find. A peace offering; an apology. For all that he sometimes thinks he doesn’t understand Rey enough, he knows one thing. Food is her language. Her life has centered around food so much, working for it, obtaining it, in a way that he will never understand. It’s why she hoards it, it’s why her sharing it with him—with Ben—shows how deeply she cares. That’s why it’s the best way he knows how to show her that he cares too. And somehow, he thinks it makes a better choice than his awkward, faltering words.

Instead, he creeps down into the dungeons again, ignoring the ache in his shoulders, the itchy welts down his back. He knew what he was getting into when he went back to Snoke’s court.

He goes back to the little room full of his family’s belongings to account for everything, and is reassured by the dust lying over much of it. It doesn’t appear Rey touched his grandfather’s things—but that only reiterates how dangerous Anakin’s lingering influence can be. Long exposure is what reduces Kylo’s own reaction to these items to a shudder. Or maybe he’s already so miserable his mood can’t be brought down any lower.

There’s only thing that has really been disturbed in this room. Rey’s dragged the family portrait out from the chest Kylo had half-wedged it behind, when he’d tried to hide it from his own sight. 

He tries to push it back where it had been, but his back won’t tolerate the movement. He covers it instead, throwing a sheet to hide his mother’s reproachful eyes, his father’s cocky smile.

His own face is gone. He’d been much skinnier when this was painted, his jaw having lost the last of its puppy fat. His upper lip and chin had been shadowed with his attempt at growing in whiskers, and his mother’s complaints about them had only made him dig his heels in and refuse to shave.

“This portrait will outlive all of us, Ben,” she’d said. “And you look ridiculous.”

She’d been right—about both things—but also wrong. The portrait had outlived his father, and the idea of Ben. But Snoke had commanded him to cut himself out even when they knew Leia had survived and reached Naboo.

The thick, oily paint had barely dried before Snoke’s attack. The portrait had been arranged for Ben’s twentieth birthday—for when he reached his majority and became an adult. Not that he felt his parents saw him any different.

“Your mother’s right,” Han had told him. “It looks like you’ve got a slug on your upper lip.”

Their comments were one of many reasons why he’d sat stiffly between them through all the hours the portrait had been painted, sulking at their casual mockery. But now, with years of nostalgia having taken root, Kylo remembers more than he’d internalized as a young man. Leia encouraging him to shave because he looked so handsome without it—a notion he’d dismissed all too easily, because she was his mother. Of course she didn’t think he was ugly. All he knew was that somehow two of the most attractive people in the kingdom had produced him, the strangely long-faced, gangly boy with features so large they all competed as targets for mockery.

Snoke had said as much; he saw Ben clearly without love to blind him. 

Not that it matters—Rey will never see his face anyway. Whatever she likes about Ben, she likes despite that. And given the scrawny, awkward boy who’d been captured in oil and pigment, it’s probably a good thing that face has been obliterated from the canvas, or she’d change her mind entirely.

He takes care to lock the room properly this time, and then, mindful that it isn’t likely to stop Rey, he sets a warning spell on it. If she or anyone else enters, he will be notified. She needs to be kept away from Anakin’s belongings.

His footsteps have turned halting now, with his back protesting the exertions of the day. As he makes the slow walk back to the rest of the castle, he processes what she has learned while he was away. Not just how to sustain light, but also that her nighttime visitor is the disappeared prince.

However, she hasn’t pieced it all together yet. She still sees Ben as a separate man to Kylo. Now would be the perfect time to bridge that divide for her, were he able. To say to her: Ben was gone while I was gone because I  _ am _ Ben. I am the lost prince, shut up behind this mask by Snoke so nobody knows the truth of who I am. 

But his lips are sealed in that regard, and his cowardly soul is thankful for it. It’s clear she has missed Ben, and she will welcome him if he comes crawling back to her bed tonight. Her knowing the truth would ensure he was cast out of it for good.

Yet this is also an excellent reason why he shouldn’t visit her anymore. If he can’t tell her the truth, he shouldn’t continue to mislead her.

He creeps to the library, and it appears she’s already left it, the sunset washing through the high windows and painting everything in hues of russet and gold. Desert colors; colors that remind him of Rey.

What doesn’t nowadays?

She’s left a stack of books on the bureau and he gingerly rummages through them, curious about what she’s been reading. He’s amazed the library hasn’t been impatient about her reshelving items—he’d received more than a few static shocks as a boy when he’d gotten sloppy.

The magic she’s reading about is along the lines of what she’d started delving into before he left: spirit energy, and the philosophy of magic. There are fragments of parchment shoved into some tomes like bookmarks, with her familiar, scratchy handwriting making notes on the paper about her thoughts. 

That’s the first stack. The second is about gardens and garden magic—no wonder the seeds planted outside the kitchen are coming along so quickly. She’s sketched herself a plan of the plot, noting what’s been seeded where, and he’s surprised to notice flowers and herbs among the vegetables. It seems unlike the ever-practical Rey. That is, until he finds the books dedicated to flowers—careful illustrations in full color by the finest artists and printers in the kingdom. It seems Rey does have a yearning for them.

It is about time the castle has them growing within its walls again. It had been full of blooms of all colors in his youth, his mother’s specialty. She’d never been much for magic, but she’d always joked what little talent she had was in growing things.

He turns to leave, true darkness ready to fall now the sun has made its dramatic exit over the horizon, when he hears a scuffle behind the bureau.

Rats? Surely not.

He waits, listening for the sound, but instead it changes, becoming a grind of stone instead.

He’s astonished to find part of the wall swing open, and a familiar head emerges from the hole it leaves behind. Rey begins to crawl out, but immediately freezes, glancing sharply upwards in his direction.

“Kriff,” she mutters. “I didn’t want you to know I’d found that one.”

He’s tempted to lie, to tell her he’d known she was in there the entire time. Perhaps even to pretend he’d known about that particular hidden nook all his life. But there are enough lies between them.

“Congratulations,” he says instead. “You’ve taught me something I didn’t know.”

She narrows her eyes, shoving herself off the floor and to her feet, kicking the panel closed behind her. “I suppose I win a reward for that.”

“You do.” He’s not sure why she seems suspicious, even reluctant. “I did promise I would reward you if you learned something I didn’t know.”

“It makes a nice change, after such a punishment.”

“I don’t follow.” He’s never punished her, even when she deserved it. He’s taken every blow, every insult, and borne them.

“Leaving,” she says. “Abandoning me in this castle for being rude to you. I wish you hadn’t chosen that as a punishment,” she says, and her face is too carefully devoid of emotion when she says it. 

Oh. Oh no.

“It wasn’t a punishment,” he replies. “I had to leave, and—” 

_ It had nothing to do with you. _ Except, that’s a lie, isn’t it? And he doesn’t want to tell her any more lies. So he doesn’t finish the sentence.

He can tell by the twitch of her mouth that she doesn’t believe him. Something about it suggests she’s trying not to let tears fall. All he wants to do is reach out and catch them on his gloved fingers, but she’d flinch away from such an intimate gesture. She wouldn’t do that with Ben—and again he finds himself jealous of his own self. Of the false identity Rey has come to care for, a callow resurrection of the boy he used to be. The pieces of himself he’d had to cast aside to survive Snoke’s reign, reassembled only for her benefit.

“It felt like a punishment. Not knowing how long.”

Yes, there’s a definite quaver to her voice.

And he feels wretched for it. He hadn’t thought about what leaving her trapped here, on her own, would be like. He’d imagined her happy to be free of his company, but he’d deprived her of any company at all, with no assurance of her survival. He truly is a monster. He’d been consumed by his own needs and fears.

“I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he promises her, and she nods, firmly. He suspects it’s as much to hide the shine of tears from him, an excuse to turn her back and walk away, as much as it is acceptance or belief of his promise.

Only when she’s gone, the library door closed behind her in the quietness of dusk, does he realize she didn’t tell him what she wanted as her reward. Nevermind. He thinks he has a good idea anyway.

He doesn’t follow her back to the keep. It will be more difficult staying away from her, as Ben, if he is closer and hidden up in his tower room. He can as easily sleep in the library if he needs to. And he has to admit, he is a little curious about her little hideaway.

Finding the mechanism to open the panel is easier said than done. 

Kylo crouches down, and then when his thighs begin to protest, he gets onto his knees, prodding and poking at the wall. He tries to feel for the mechanism with magic but that only gets him a stinging rebuke from the library, a sharp backdraft to his own magic. When he eventually does manage to press on the right brick, the panel Rey had crawled out through springs open and whacks him in the thigh. It feels like another reproach.

He floats a small orb of light into the space and crawls in, astonished to find a hammock made of blankets stretched across the space, and more books scattered on the padded bench. Rey has obviously spent some time in here while he was gone—was she sleeping in here rather than in her chamber?

Her chamber. It rattles him to know he thinks of it that way now, despite all the years it was his own. But it feels right to surrender it over to her. 

Just as it feels wrong to know she’s sought sanctuary here in the library while he’s been gone.

He peers at the books. They’re another motley assortment: a history of the castle, which chronicled up to his great-grandfather’s reign; a history of the kingdom; a collection of childrens’ stories, and more. The book of stories distracts him momentarily—he recognizes it, how could he not? It was one of his closest companions when he’d been very small. At first he’d relied on adults to read adventures to him, wondrous yarns involving heroes and dragons, elves and monsters, told over and over by his nurses or, if he was lucky, his father. Until he’d been able to read to himself, when there’d seemed no limits to where his imagination could take him then. Eventually he’d claimed the book by adding his name to the inside cover in his clumsy handwriting, and then when he’d grown tired of it—when it was so worn it was falling to pieces—he’d dedicated it to the library. Like it might mean anything to anybody except himself one day.

When he was a young man—an adolescent, with a very different future to the one he’d lived—he’d always expected his own children would read that book too. In their time. Children had once seemed a certainty; at the ceremony to mark his majority, there had already been the daughters of noble houses vying for his attention. All his life, he’d never been able to speak to a girl his age without the pressing knowledge that she was probably more interested in the prospect of becoming queen than in getting to know him.

Rey knew who he was. She’d like him despite not knowing he’d once been a prince. If nothing else, he prays her attitude will not change because of what she’s learned.

He doesn’t touch the book. He doesn’t want her to know he’s been in here—she’d been perturbed enough to know he knew about it. So he leaves the book where it is—there’s no better recipient than Rey, with her stolen childhood, than the ghostly children he will never father. A gift from a lonely boy to a lonely girl.

This cocoon she’s created for herself, her accusation of abandonment earlier, give him a little more insight into why she’s been so accepting of Ben’s company. She’s lonely, and she doesn’t view Ben as a monster or jailer like she does Kylo. However she may really feel about him, he’s her only choice for human contact, for touch, for a connection. Of course she treasures it so much.

And when she is free, let loose into the world with all her wondrous abilities, when she has more choice, she will forget about Ben. She’ll choose somebody more deserving of her affection, somebody who isn’t caught in a curse and unable to make her happy. Somebody whose soul shines as brightly as hers.

All that attention on his favorite childhood book had distracted him from the handful of remaining titles, and he startles when he sees them, almost knocking his head against the wall.

Those books. Really?

He backs out of the nook as quickly as he can, shutting it away and deciding he will leave it as Rey’s space. It’s for the best. Now he feels like he’s been a voyeur, a witness to what she’s been reading in secret, and also left feeling completely inadequate again. He can’t say for certain why she’s been reading books about... _ intimacy _ , but he’s sure she knows more about the subject than he does. 

Did she seek out those books before or after she knew he was a prince? Does it matter?

Yes, he supposes it does. If she started doing research afterwards...Hux’s words about womens’ reluctance drift through his head. The Guards’ callous disregard for the women they bedded. Surely Rey doesn’t think he expects  _ that _ from her; that she’s prepared to do that because they shared a few kisses and thinks it will make him happy? Or that because he is a prince, his lust is important and should be deferred to?

He needs to sit down.

He slumps into the bureau chair heavily, and stares down at the polished wood. He’ll sleep here tonight. He can sleep in a chair; he’s done it before. Or the floor would work, so long as he keeps to his side and doesn’t aggravate his back. Rey’s makeshift hammock is out of the question—it’s too small for him, and too intimate. It would be like sleeping in her bed, and that’s what he’s trying to distance himself from.

He’s about to take the helmet off to make himself more comfortable when he hears a scratching outside the door. Instantly he’s alert, on his feet, listening intently. Has Rey returned?

But there’s a quiet yowl instead. The cat.

He crosses to open the door and is amazed when the creature comes inside, brushing up against his legs and padding across to the bureau, where it flops down underneath. 

That’s…new.

“Are you staying?” he asks, aware that it is ridiculous to ask such a question of an animal that doesn’t have any command of the human tongue.

The cat opens one yellow eye and peers at him, then shuts it again, burying his head underneath a paw.

“Very well,” Kylo mutters.

He locks the door from the inside, then props an old broom through the handles for good measure. This way Rey has no way of getting into the library while he’s in here. Safely ensconced, he takes the helmet off, crossing back to the bureau and dropping it on top, unlacing his boots and kicking them off for good measure. His cloak will make an adequate blanket, so he shucks down to his undershirt and breaches, lying down a careful distance from the cat.

It doesn’t take long for him to be sucked into unconsciousness, but the night is still dark as pitch when he is yanked out of it.

He jerks awake, staring blearily in the direction of the library doors. Did he imagine it, that thump at them? Was it a dream? The cat certainly isn’t alert, its breath coming in little snorts.

He tries to settle back down, heart racing, when it happens again. Not a thud, a  _ tug _ , an insistent prodding at the edge of his mind.

What the—

_ Snoke. _

He tries to throw up his mental barriers, cloak himself from his surroundings. But the voice which pierces through doesn’t belong to his master—it’s much softer, sweeter, despite the annoyance in its tone.

_ I know you’re here _ , Rey tells him, and her voice rings in his ears despite her being all the way across the castle.  _ I can feel you _ .

This is advanced magic. Advanced spirit magic—exactly what has she been reading over the last few weeks? 

Another tug, like somebody has taken his hand and tried to yank him forward, except it’s not his body she’s trying to pull towards her. It’s his soul.

He has no idea how to respond. Snoke always kept spirit magic off of the curriculum when he was tutoring Ben, and it’s not as if Ben had any real interest in the subject anyway.

_ I know you’re here _ , she repeats.  _ You’d better come see me tonight. _

He tries to reply. He really does. He reaches out to the part of her he can feel close to his mind, the part between them that feels bridged. Like when he’d taught her to fight back against Snoke and their minds momentarily connected. Even though he tries to form words to say to her, they wither and die like rotting fruit on a vine before they reach her.

She’s found something he doesn’t quite understand; that she will have to teach him.

The problem is that it means her persistent poking doesn’t cease, and so he does the only thing he can do—he sets off across the castle to tell her in person that he can’t visit her anymore.

* * *

Rey isn’t in her bed when he reaches the chamber door—he can hear her pacing inside. He has to take hold of the door handle firmly to make sure she can’t open it if she feels him nearby. Then he raps at the wood, gently. Three times.

He’s not sure if he imagines her intake of breath, but he can definitely hear her bare feet pitter-pattering across the floorboards, the rustle of blankets as she climbs into bed. He opens the door a crack, keeping himself in the shadows, before he calls through.

“Are your eyes covered?”

“Yes.”

She sounds nervous, somehow, in that one syllable. He feels nervous, energy prickling through him and leaving him restless. She must have felt the same way, if she was pacing.

He pushes the door open wider, padding through into the room that feels so familiar to him, and yet eerily different tonight. Like he’s been away for years, not a matter of weeks.

Rey is curled up in the bed with her eyes wrapped, wringing her hands together like he’s never seen her do before. He approaches the bed slowly, and when he doesn’t make a move to come any closer, she reaches out to pat the blankets by her feet.

“You don’t have to stay standing up,” she tells him, with more than a hint of shyness. With his eyes adjusting to the dark, he can see her cheeks are stained pink. She really is nervous; she shouldn’t be. She’s not the one facing the person she loves, unsure if they want to kiss again, or feeling undeserving because of all that’s transpired.

When he doesn’t make a move, she reaches out and grabs his hand—grabs it so precisely he fears her blindfold has slipped, except he doesn’t feel a stab of pain—and tugs him down.

He doesn’t resist, even though her pull is hardly a match for him if he were to try. Though, isn’t that the problem? He can’t resist her lure. He never can. If only Snoke had understood what a perfect trap she was for Kylo—not to be toyed with and thrown away like he had done. Kylo would have done Snoke’s every bidding if it ensured she was safe, and she could be his.

But then. It’s a good thing Snoke hadn’t understood that.

When he is seated beside her, he folds his hands into his lap and starts to try and pull together the words he needs to tell her. That he can’t see her anymore—it is too dangerous for both of them—that he has no right to come steal her time like he does. But Rey precipitates all of that—she leans forward and throws her arms around his shoulders.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she whispers into his neck, at the same moment he hisses with pain.

She pulls away instantly, and the horror is writ clearly across her face. “I’m sorry!” And then, the horror melts quickly into anger. “They hurt you, didn’t they?”

He nods, forgetting she can’t see the movement, then clears his throat and murmurs to her. “Please don’t worry.”

“Worry?” Her voice rises, shrill with indignation. “Ben, you’ve been gone for two weeks and when you return you’re injured and you’re—you’re thinner, aren’t you?”

She reaches out with that uncanny precision and cups his face, running a thumb across his cheekbone, across his jaw. 

“You are,” she says. “I’ll make Kylo pay for this.”

“It isn’t his fault,” he insists. “Besides, it’s not that bad.”

“It is!”

“How can you tell? You only touched me once and—”

“Once was enough. Ben, I could find you while blindfolded anywhere, if I had to, I could pick you out of a crowd by the feel of your face alone.” 

Then she seems to think better, biting her lip, shrinking back a little bit. All her fierceness melts away.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“I’m being too familiar. Your highness.”

He remembers to act surprised, to pause before he responds. “Don’t. Please don’t. I’m not—”

“But you are.”

“Not anymore. Especially not here—when I’m with you, I only want to be Ben. This doesn’t change anything.”

“You think? This castle—this is yours. This chamber was yours too. This bed…”

She trails off, flustered.

“They haven’t been mine for a very long time,” he says. “Snoke took everything from me. Even—” He pauses, wondering how to phrase it, if he can even say it. “Even who I was.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“The curse. There’s so much I—” He feels his throat close up, and he pauses waiting for the effect to subside. “Snoke doesn’t want people to know I’m alive, or it would give the Resistance hope. He doesn’t want anyone having hope.”

“That’s horrible.” She fidgets with the blankets for a moment. “So you’re not just a lost prince. You’re a cursed prince.”

“I suppose so.”

One corner of her mouth lifts. “Like in a fairytale.”

“A sad fairytale.”

“No, a romantic one.” She bites her lip and looks away again. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

Hope and dismay are at war in his chest. What does she mean? Does she not think of him romantically—or does she? “Why not?”

“Because you are a prince, and I’m a nobody. A scavenger.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true.”

“No it isn’t. Rey—you’re a powerful magic user. You’re the brightest part of my life. Whether your blood is royal or not doesn’t matter to me—we are equals.”

Her next question is asked in a very small voice, one he thinks takes a lot of courage for her to ask. “Then why didn’t you come to me tonight, when you returned to the castle?”

“Did you think I was avoiding you?”

“Yes.”

“Yet you called to me anyway.”

She lifts her chin. Defiant. “Yes.”

“Sweet Rey.” 

“If you don’t want to kiss me again, it doesn’t matter. We can just talk like we’ve always done. I don’t mind.”

He tries to match her courage with his own, reaching out to cup her face in his hand, the way she’d touched him before they kissed. “I was only avoiding you because I didn’t think you would want to kiss me again.”

There. He’s confessed it, even if she doesn’t know the whole truth.

Her lip wobbles as she processes his words. “Well. I do.”

“I thought—if you knew the truth of who I was—”

“What? You think I’d find out you’re a prince and wouldn’t care anymore? That’s absurd.”

“It’s not that. It’s—I wish I could explain it better.”

“It’s okay. I know you can’t.” She nuzzles into his hand. “So long as it’s not because I’m too common to talk to.”

“Rey—there is nothing common about you.” His heart skips as her breath puffs along his palm. “Besides, royalty is about more than blood. My father wasn’t a noble before he married my mother. Neither was my grandfather before he became king. As far as the castle is concerned, marriage is as good as blood.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Royalty is only a title, passed on through birthright and other bonds. I’ve never done anything to earn it, and I’ve done plenty to lose it. You don’t owe me any respect just because of who my mother was.”

“Well then. I suppose it’s a good thing that I like you despite that.”

The air changes between them, crackling as the edges of their energies blur and collide. Kylo realizes he’s been leaning closer to Rey, slowly but surely, but also reaching out to her with his magic, and she’s reaching back to him.

This is it. She really does want to kiss him again and he—he finds himself unable to stop her all over again. He can’t tell if her eyes are closed behind the blindfold, but her head is tilted and she’s leaning towards him too.

Which is when his back insists on making its discomfort known. He must shift too quickly, because one of his wounds sends a lance of pain through him, and he hisses through his teeth.

Rey freezes. “I completely forgot you’re injured,” she mutters sheepishly.

“Truthfully, so did I,” he replies. “You have that effect on me.”

She swats lightly at his arm. “Go fetch the poultice, your highness, and I shall apply it.”

“There’s no need. The wounds are older and already healing.”

“There  _ is _ a need; you need something to help with the pain. Now get the poultice, please, or we’ll be waiting much longer for your back to heal before I can kiss you again.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I absolutely would.”

Ben fetches the jar of poultice.

* * *

The sun is already rising when he finally creeps out of her chamber, and he moves as swiftly as he can, across the courtyard before she has a chance to rise and look out of the window. He’s never faced this problem before, but half of his clothes and his mask are still in the library.

It feels like sneaking back in after a night of debauchery when he unlocks the library door, like a young person who’s been out all night drinking and fears the wrath of their parents. Why it feels like the library might be judging him, he cannot say. But it appears the cat has not appreciated being locked in when he left, and offers a reproachful growl when the door opens.

BB-8 sprints out and disappears down the stairs in a blur of orange and white, and Kylo is perturbed to find his black clothes are now covered in non-black fluff. He gathers everything together and retreats to the nearest portal, where he can slip through the passages back up to the tower room.

When he’s in fresh clothes that aren’t thoroughly adorned in cat hair, he treads a now-familiar path to Tekka’s Livery.

Neither Lor San nor Dasha are out in the yard. Instead, a whey-faced girl is sweeping out the stable Grimtaash usually occupies. Of course, the horse is still at the fortress, where Kylo can at least be confident he’ll be well-tended. 

The girl looks at him dubiously. “They said you was coming today, but I thought it’d be on th’orse.”

“Not this time.” Why does nobody in this dwelling ever look at him with the respect and fear everyone else does? This wisp of a girl, who barely reaches his chest height, doesn’t seem frightened of him at all, nor particularly impressed.

She shrugs and drops the broom. “I’ll tell ma yer here.”

Perhaps it’s just adolescent hubris she’s channeling, that feeling of immortality and untouchability. He remembers it well. True to her word, she disappears into the house—the building Kylo has never entered—and leaves him on his own. He assumes her mother is Dasha, but there always seem to be different family members in the yard, and he’s never figured out how they’re all connected.

Dasha emerges moments later with a basket tucked under one arm. She doesn’t say anything, tipping her head to one side to observe him a moment. He resists the urge to fidget under her gentle gaze.

“Where is your father?” he asks her. He can’t face a lecture from Lor San today. 

“Out.” And she smiles, carefully blank.  _ Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. _

He doesn’t ask; not about that. It’s not like he wanted to see the old man anyway. His whereabouts are of no consequence to Kylo even if he’s mischief-making—not if Snoke hasn’t directly ordered him to take action.

“You were gone longer than expected,” Dasha says with an admonishing frown. “Good thing I made a cake this morning.”

“I haven’t come for cake.”

“It won’t hurt though, will it? It’s not chocolate, this one—it’s vanilla with whipped cream and cherry jam. I’ve a pot of the jam for you to take with you as well.”

He wants to protest. Cherries are the last thing he needs to think of Rey eating. But if food is the way to apologize to her…

“I need flowers.”

To her credit, Dasha doesn’t smile or laugh, and though she must know why he wants flowers, she doesn’t act knowing or smug.

“Hard to come by in Coruscant, these days,” she tells him. “Not like it was when I were a girl.”

“I know that.” Everything is harder to come by, but things that grow from the earth most of all. He thinks of the apples in the courtyard, plump and ripe when he returned yesterday. This morning three had been on the flagstones below the tree, black with rot.

“Still, I’m sure we can find you something,” Dasha says with a bright, encouraging smile. “They’re not sold at market anymore, but plenty of people still grow them in their yards, if they can, and would happily take a coin or two for them.”

“How long will that take?” he asks warily. There’s no point hanging around long enough to become a sitting target for Lor San’s inevitable lecture about facing consequences.

“Not long. I can send a couple of the children out to collect them. I can’t make any promises about color, mind. It’ll be whatever’s available.”

“That’s fair.” He roots around in a pocket until he comes up with a handful of coins, and holds them out to her. He thinks they’re worth more than any flowers would cost, even black market ones—but what does he know. It’s not like the city is teaming with them anymore, the Flower Market now a haven for rats and horse manure.

He’s ready to park himself on one of the steps and wait, but gets a whiff of stinkweed and changes his mind. Even if Lor San isn’t returning, it never was his favorite scent.

“I’ll be back for them later.”

“Are you sure? I know pa wants to speak to you.”

“Is it about his secret Resistance meeting?” he asks. 

To himself, he sounds tired. But the mask has a way of making his words sound blunt, even cruel, even when that’s not his intention. Dasha’s benign sweetness falls away, replaced with a flicker of shock and then stony calm.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Hmm.” It’s not like there’s anywhere else for Lor San to be this early, and there’s no doubt the old man is still an active member of the straggling remains of Snoke’s opponents. Why the Tekkas haven’t taken the chance to poison his food, he’s not sure—though he suspects it’s because they don’t want to harm whoever else lives in the castle—but Kylo is sure his secret comings and goings aren’t discussed. The Tekkas took an oath to protect the portal he’s using, and they can’t honor that by betraying its location.

When Dasha makes no move to take the coins from him, he places them on the closest window ledge, then walks away. Her stare follows him, boring into the back of his head, and Kylo can’t shake the feeling she knows more about everything than is humanly possible.

* * *

Upon his return, Rey has sequestered herself away in her library alcove, and he’s only sure of that because BB-8 follows him into the room and sniffs insistently at the panel hiding her. She sticks her head out and frowns at him until he puts the cake down on the bureau.

How the library tolerates her messy eating habits, he will never know. Although she does have a personal valet in the form of the cat, who gobbles up any crumbs she leaves behind.

She shuts the nook up behind her, and he averts his eyes, wondering what she’s been reading this morning. Surely not  _ those _ books? If so, she’s keeping a remarkable composure. No—she’s probably been reading the fairy tales.

Part of him preens as she takes some of the cake, her frosty attitude visibly thawing as she bites into her slice.  _ See—I know you! _ that part of him cries; happy and a little smug that food really has been accepted as an apology.

“What are we doing this morning?” she asks, and a drop of cherry jam catches at the corner of her mouth, dark and glossy. She catches it on her thumb, casually sucking it into her mouth, but she keeps a determined stare at his mask. She doesn’t blink.

He blinks. He’s blinking furiously, trying to rid himself of the memory of her kisses. This isn’t the right time to think about it, and his body is reacting in strange ways, a rush of heat passing through him.

“Kylo?” she prompts. Her thumb continues resting on her lower lip, and if he didn’t know better, he’d consider the way she’s staring up at him through her lashes was a challenge. Or perhaps some kind of test. Why is she watching him so intently?

“What do you want to study?” he asks, and the mask is his only saving grace, covering up his breathlessness.

She brightens a little more, happy at the idea of being in control. Another small gift from him to her, another act of contrition.

“I have a few ideas.”

* * *

It seems that despite all the time Rey has spent shut up in the library, absorbing a swathe of its contents, she’s done little practical work other than using light and helping the kitchen garden spring into life. Her focus has been on spirit energy, and there hasn’t been anybody for her to practice that on until her impromptu communication with Ben last night.

It’s good. It means Kylo still feels like he has things to teach her. And he desperately needs there to be things he can still teach her.

“I can make things float, can’t I?” she asks. “Not just move them towards me or away from me—I can lift things into the air and get them to stay there.”

“Yes,” he confirms. “It’s all about leverage.”

Rey makes swift progress, moving from small to larger objects, focusing on keeping them steady and still. Kylo is fairly certain BB-8 doesn’t appreciate being hoisted from the ground and levitated in mid-air for several seconds. The cat disappears in a flurry of fur and claws, and doesn’t reappear for the rest of the day.

She waits until Kylo is lulled into a false sense of security before she asks him what’s been on her mind.

“That room you found me in when you got back. The one in the dungeons. What was in it?”

He’s surprised she didn’t ask him this earlier. Perhaps she’s needed time to settle her emotions before she can approach the subject. And he understands what she means despite the impreciseness of her questions. She’s not asking about the objects—the throne, or the portraits, or the old royal accoutrements.

“The remnants of degraded magic, from somebody who was almost destroyed by wielding it,” he tells her baldly.

She nods. “Why was it able to influence me like that? It’s like it got into my anger and—and amplified it. It took over me.”

“You hadn’t shielded yourself against it. And honestly, after so long without human contact, I’m sure the magic still surrounding those objects was desperate for a vessel to jump into it.”

She spins the bucket she’s currently levitating idly. “Who did they belong to, those things?”

“A king.”

“An ancient one?”

“Not at all.”

She frowns as she thinks, carefully lowering the bucket to the floor. It’s an improvement over the time she’d let it drop to the stone and splinter into pieces—he’d made her repair it and use it again. “Anakin, then? He’s not mentioned much in the library, but I remember hearing stories in Jakku. Whispers. Of how he was almost as rotten as Snoke.”

Kylo winces beneath his mask. “He wasn’t as far gone as Snoke, but in the end, his magic consumed him. All that’s left is in those objects. They’re best kept away until the magic has fully decayed and nobody will be affected by them anymore.”

Rey is lost in concentration—and it’s not concentration on her magic, he can tell that much. Is she doing the mental arithmetic and piecing together how he—Ben—is related to that malevolent presence?

“Now that you’ve mastered one item,” Kylo tells her, “it’s time to move onto more.”

This requires more finely-grained control than she’s used in a while, and she ends up with a plate spinning out of control, smashing against the flagstone, and a shard of it shearing into her forearm. She shrieks, and he crosses in a few long strides, her arm cradled in his gloved hands before the blood has even begun to well up from the wound.

At least it wasn’t one of Dasha’s good plates.

He picks the shard out of the skin and examines it. Not deep. Still.

“You should go clean that, and put poultice on it.”

“It’s fine. I’ve had far worse.”

“Rey.” Can she tell he’s pleading? Or does he just sound bossy? He scrambles for a good reason. “If your body is spending time healing itself, it will have to work harder to control your magic.”

Rey’s teeth dig into her bottom lip. She’s not looking at him when she whispers. “There’s no poultice left.”

He freezes. She’s right—she’d used the last of it on him. He needs to make more of it, but how can he without the ingredients?

She’s gone very still too, as if waiting for a reaction from him. When she gets none, she starts to provide an explanation. A bad lie. “I hurt myself—while you were gone. So I had to use it all up.”

“You hurt yourself.”

He hopes it’s a lie. But what if it isn’t?

Only her unconvincing nod, and the way she still won’t look at his mask, confirms that it  _ is _ a wholesale lie. “It’s all healed up now, but there’s no poultice left.”

“Stay here. I’ll be back.”

It’s been a long time since he’s ventured into Coruscant on foot, rather than horseback, but he at least knows where to go looking for fresh bacta plants. They’re no longer sold in the open market, but there are those always happy to provide a black market product to one of Snoke’s enforcers, thinking it will stand them in good stead with the court.

He’s not one to disavow them of that notion. He’d gain nothing by making it clear there’s no such thing as being under Snoke’s protection—Snoke’s cruelty is guided by aimless whims, and nobody is truly protected from it.

The only difference this time, as he ducks into the soot-covered lean-to on the back of a home, is that this time he pays extra coin for some bacta seeds as well.

On his way back, he passes through Tekka’s Livery, collecting an armful of white and blue blooms, before slipping back into the passages. He’s not sure he’d have been able to procure them for himself, and he’s definitely sure he didn’t want the less salubrious denizens of Coruscant knowing he’d wanted flowers.

Their scent is heavy and heady in the dark, dank tunnel, and he sweats inside his armor. Will she even like them?

It’s too late to turn back now. Luckily when he reaches the portal which lets him out into the kitchens, Rey is nowhere to be found. It gives him time to find a suitable repository—in this case, an old bucket, dousing the stems with water.

Predictably, the library won’t let him go inside with the bucket. He has to leave it outside the door, where BB-8 sniffs at the flowers and promptly sneezes.

“Don’t eat them,” Kylo mutters, as if the cat would pay attention to his instruction. But it rouses Rey’s attention—she glances up from the book she’s reading and arches an eyebrow at him. Her hand is wrapped in some of her old rags, and he’s pleased to see that they aren’t soaked with her blood.

“You’re back,” she notes. “Quicker than last time, too. That’s good.”

But he’s pleased to see there’s almost a teasing quirk to the side of her mouth as she says it. Maybe she does trust him that he won’t abandon her again. He has no intention of it, now that he knows the damage it did to her.

“I brought you something,” he tells her, then loses his courage at her inquisitive stare. Instead of mentioning the flowers, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the pouch of bacta seeds. “I have the ingredients to make more poultice, but I also bought these so you can grow the plant it needs. This way you can make more in the future.”

The transformation is instant. Her mouth drops open, the corners lifting and folding into her dimples. A precious smile. One he’s caused.

“I can grow it?” she asks in delight.

“You can. But first, I need to show you how to make the poultice. It’s something you’ll likely need plenty of, if you ever end up in real combat.”

She’s already rising to her feet. “I think I saw a book about potions.” She rushes off to find it, tossing the book she was reading down on the bureau.  _ Feline Friends: Proper Care and Management of Household Cats. _

She returns with a heavy blue volume and starts leafing through to the table of contents. When she finds the right page, Kylo gets her to copy the recipe down onto a piece of parchment, hoping that writing it out will help her remember it, and then asks him to follow her down to the kitchen.

He’s completely forgotten about what lies outside the library door. He’s ahead of her, one foot already on the staircase when he hears her cry of delight.

“Oh!”

He freezes. Turns to find she’s on her knees, burying her face straight into the blossoms, and now her face is split open in a real smile, as wide as he’s ever seen it.

“Are these for me?” she asks when she looks up at him.

For a moment, he almost says no. He almost makes a flippant comment, about how he thought the castle needed some color, or thought of a magical use for them. He almost shoots himself in the foot again, not only keeping Rey at arm’s length, but shoving her as far from himself as he can.

But he’s learning. Maybe.

“…Yes.” 

“They’re beautiful.”

She rises, and doesn’t immediately heave the bucket up to carry it with them. Instead they pause, caught in the moment, her shining with happiness and he feeling it reflected inside himself like sunlight on water. He holds himself still, sure—so sure—that she is about to throw her arms around him and hug him in gratitude.

He won’t do a thing to stop her.

But instead Rey seems to shake herself, and reach for the bucket, turning away from him with a glow in her cheeks. “Thank you,” she murmurs.

“Do you think you can get them downstairs without using your hands?” he challenges her.

“Of course.”

And she does.

* * *

Making poultice out of bacta is a precise practice, and Rey is not especially good at being precise. She can follow instructions but since her experience of cooking is limited, she’s not used to measuring out ingredients, or timing how long to boil something for. But the first batch she makes, with Kylo supervising, is adequate. He also shows her how to sterilize the existing pot with heat so it can be re-used.

Then he gives her the cherry jam Dasha sent him with, which she carefully tucks into the pantry like it is something precious to be hidden away.

They don’t talk much during the handful of hours it takes to complete the task, but Rey hums happily as she works, chopping up bacta root and tears its leaves into shreds. Only towards the end does she turn inquisitive again.

“Are there any other plants that can be used for healing?” she asks as they wait for the concoction to reduce in the cauldron they’ve rescued from the old fireplace. “Or is it just bacta?”

“Plenty, but bacta is most effective. I was taught it was cultivated by ancient magic users from other plants to be as good as it is. But it does need a touch of magic to make it as effective as it can be.”

She nods, stirring at the pot with a wooden spoon. “Does that mean magic can be used to heal in other ways?”

He’s surprised she hasn’t already come across this in the library. But then—it was only two weeks, and there are tens of thousands of books in the library. She can’t have read everything.

“Yes. And no.”

She sighs. “Do you ever intend to answer one of my questions with a straightforward answer?”

“If you ask a question that has a straightforward answer, then I will. But in this case—many practitioners have tried to use magic to heal themselves or others. It takes a great amount of skill, and if wielded incorrectly, can do more harm than good.”

As his grandmother had learned, when Anakin tried to save her life. She’d only been injured because of his folly and his temper, and then his attempts to make it right had led to her death—and Anakin’s descent into true darkness.

Rey chews on her lower lip. “It sounds like it’s probably a kind of spirit energy then. Like the way I encourage life into the seedlings and help them grow.”

Once again, Kylo’s heart turns over in his chest. Her attention has been well and truly caught by the realm of spirit magic, and it’s not a path he can help her on. His thoughts drift back below the castle, to the room he found her in when he returned, and the rotten taint of Anakin’s corrupted magic.

He can’t help but wonder if he’s set Rey on a path that is too dangerous for either of them to handle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on [Tumblr](https://cellar-darlings.tumblr.com/) for a teaser of chapter seventeen on November 30th!


	18. Chapter Seventeen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The apple harvest comes and goes.
> 
> Rey plucks the ones that haven’t been taken by rot, storing them in one of the cellars like she’s read about. And once the apples are gone, the leaves on all the fruit trees turn russet and golden, then wither and fall. Winter will arrive sooner than she would like. She doesn’t remember winter and she’s not sure how well it will suit her.
> 
> Despite this, her garden flourishes, a true testament to her skills, and she even persuades Kylo to bring her manure so she can keep the soil warm and fertile all winter long. Watching him float a sack of horse manure across the courtyard is funnier than she dares to admit to his face.
> 
> She thinks she’s been in the castle for half a year now—she’s certainly been away from Jakku for that long. Her thoughts rarely turn to it anymore, of her little tumbledown shack or the market square. All gone now, unless the residents returned to rebuild when the Guard left. Sometimes Rey does wonder about Maz—did she escape? If she did, where is she now—is she safe?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends! I'm back with a chapter that finally starts to earn this story it's M rating*. Please enjoy another ~8k words of two idiots sharing a braincell.
> 
> *technically the violence already did that but we all know what people want from an M rating.

The apple harvest comes and goes.

Rey plucks the ones that haven’t been taken by rot, storing them in one of the cellars like she’s read about. And once the apples are gone, the leaves on all the fruit trees turn russet and golden, then wither and fall. Winter will arrive sooner than she would like. She doesn’t remember winter and she’s not sure how well it will suit her.

Despite this, her garden flourishes, a true testament to her skills, and she even persuades Kylo to bring her manure so she can keep the soil warm and fertile all winter long. Watching him float a sack of horse manure across the courtyard is funnier than she dares to admit to his face.

She thinks she’s been in the castle for half a year now—she’s certainly been away from Jakku for that long. Her thoughts rarely turn to it anymore, of her little tumbledown shack or the market square. All gone now, unless the residents returned to rebuild when the Guard left. Sometimes Rey does wonder about Maz—did she escape? If she did, where is she now—is she safe?

There were answers to be had about Jakku, about how exactly Rey ended up there, and who took her, but she expects they died with Unkar Plutt. All she has is the name Dameron and a fragment of a memory. Hardly enough to keep her tethered to any sense of belonging to her family.

Kylo has ideas about where her training should go next, after she’s mastered the art of floating multiple objects, and she doesn’t like it at all.

“I don’t want to do that,” she tells him, arms folded.

“Why? You’ve happily learned how to fight with a sword.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“How is it not? Both tools are capable of causing great harm.”

“I’ll only draw my sword to defend myself. I’ll only  _ use _ it to defend myself—I won’t use it to harm somebody if I don’t have to.”

“Then the same goes for magic. You should be able to duel with magic.”

“No. I’ll learn how to defend myself with magic—but not to hurt people. I won’t.”

How can she make him understand? That if magic is tied to who they are—if her ability to use magic is a fundamental part of her—then how she uses it affects her as much as it affects the world around her. If her reading has taught her anything, it’s that using her magic to harm others will only rebound onto her spirit. 

She’s fought others before, she’s wounded people to defend herself and others, but she won’t go out into the world with a list of ways stored in her head of how she can do it on purpose. She refuses. They’ll come too easily to her; she’s always been quick to anger. And if she attacks in anger, she’ll be back where she was in the fortress, covered in Phasma’s blood and sick with it.

She never asked Kylo how Phasma is. If she survived, if her injuries healed. She can’t face the truth, and she never, ever wants to be in that position again.

“You’ll be in danger that way,” Kylo argues against her continuing stubbornness. “Anyone you come up against will always have the upper hand.”

“Then so be it.”

“Rey, I told you that I would only release you when I thought you were strong enough to survive the world and anyone who might try to harm you. I can’t do that if you refuse to learn the magic that will enable you to protect yourself.”

“Then show me how to protect myself. But  _ only _ that. Unless you really do intend to keep me here forever?”

The silence stretches on, and she thinks that maybe he does. Maybe Kylo wouldn’t be averse to that at all, no matter what promises he made.

But finally, he does reply. “If you can prove to me that you’re capable of winning a fight against an enemy using only defensive magic, then I’ll consider your training complete.”

“And how will I prove that?”

“By defeating me. No weapons, no offensive magic—if you are able to best me with neither of those at your disposal, then I’ll let you go. Not today—you aren’t ready yet. But soon, we’ll fight, and you can try to earn your freedom.”

“If I do—if I do, I have one more reward to ask of you.”

Ben. This is her opportunity, and she can’t leave him behind.

“What is it?”

“No. I won’t tell you until I’ve won it. But promise me—promise me that no matter what I want, you’ll deliver it?”

“Anything,” he says, without hesitation, and she knows that he has no idea what she’s going to demand.

Nor does he have any idea how hard she will work to finally fulfil her promise to herself, and to Ben.

* * *

Nights she spends in Ben’s arms, learning how much of a delight it is to kiss for hours at a time.

Ben is the perfect gentleman. She’s read plenty from her books about what comes after kissing, and he never tries to move beyond that. His hands stay firmly wedded to her waist, or curled in her hair. While he doesn’t reciprocate her touches, he doesn’t seem to mind her hands and their explorations of his torso—which, she is pleased to discover, is not as skinny as when he returned to the castle, his ribs not easily discernible under the skin, his wounds healed into sensitive scars that make him shiver when she traces them. She thinks she would like him to reciprocate, but she does not ask. What if he thinks it improper? Some books say  _ that _ is only something done between people who are married to each other, and maybe that’s what he was taught as a prince?

It’s hardly like she can expect him to want to marry her, or that they can get married, trapped in the castle together. No matter what he’s said about his father or his grandfather, they were accomplished men when they met their wives. They were fighters, heroes. She spent most of her life picking war machines to pieces in the desert, and is now a prisoner. Who would want her as their queen?

But knowing he’s a prince spurs her reading interests down a new path. The written histories of the kingdom and the royal family haven’t yet caught up to his grandfather’s reign—where she knows something happened, even if it hasn’t been chronicled. She’s also started pulling out darker, heavier texts that deal with curses. Because he is a cursed prince, isn’t he? And if stories have taught her anything, it’s that curses can be broken.

That’s their key to getting out of all of this. Breaking the curse.

She tells him this one night and he all but laughs at her. “I am quite sure you won’t find a way to break this curse in that library,” he insists, but it’s not like he had access to the library—she does. And she’ll keep looking.

One thing she does come to rely on more than anything is the sentience of the library. At first she’d thought it was a complex interplay of spells that underpinned and enforced the rules set in place by whoever built and governed this place. Yet the more time she spent in the place, and the more she learns about spirit energy, the more her opinion about that changes. 

Sometimes she opens a book, or crawls into one of the hidden alcoves, and gets an impression of the people who’ve been here before, like she’s briefly stepped into a memory. The laughter as somebody read this passage, the euphoria of an epiphany. It’s just like when she senses the reminders of life around the castle. This, she thinks, is an imprint of spirit energy in the fabric of the place, and it’s all been caught in the magic centered on the library, like a net, until it’s become something bigger than the library itself. All of that magic has gathered here until these rooms, these shelves and their contents, have become an entity in its own right, and when she’s polite to it, and obeys its rules, it rewards her with its assistance.

All of which makes her slightly more ashamed of the way she locks herself in the windowless nook , how she touches herself while reading those books, or thinking of Ben. So much so, she stops, and relocates these activities to the big bathtub in her refresher.

She should be looking for a way out of the castle. She knows she should. But since facing the dungeons, she’s evermore convinced she won’t find her way into the passages until she can master spirit magic so complex it might not have even been invented yet.

Still, she tries in other ways.

“You know how we can make things float?” she asks Kylo during one training session in the courtyard. It is a chilly day, the sky a steady, solid grey overhead. Soon they won’t be able to have lessons outdoors anymore, and will need to retreat into the old mess hall to work. 

Kylo doesn’t grace her with a response. It’s a silly question anyway, given Rey is currently floating no less than a dozen objects around the courtyard, at varying heights. Something she’s been able to do for weeks, but he likes to run her through drills of skills she’s already mastered, making sure she isn’t forgetting them. Insisting she must always practice even the basics so they are as instinctual to her as breathing.

“Can we make ourselves float?” she continues.

“I’m not teaching you to float.”

“Why not?”

“Because what you really want to learn to do is to fly out of here.”

“—You don’t know that.”

“I do, and I also know it’s incredibly dangerous.” 

“Fine,” she grumbles. “No floating me.”

Besides, it’s not as if she expected BB-8 to be happy with a plan that involved him being held in her arms as she floated them both over the side of the keep. At night. She’d have needed more bacta to deal with the claw marks afterwards than she thinks exists in the kingdom.

* * *

Some days Kylo has to leave, to make Snoke think he is still doing his duties, but he’s always very clear with Rey about how long he will be away for. He even suggests she doesn’t need to keep growing the vegetables. But she tells him that this is better than him continually smuggling food from the fortress, lest they eventually figure out he’s taking more than he needs.

“All you need to bring me are meat, dairy, and grains,” she tells him.

“So long as you don’t expect me to bring you a cow next, so you can try milking it and making your own cream and butter,” he grumbles.

“Hmm,” she cups her chin in her hand and pretends to think about it. “You know, I’m sure if I cleared out the workshops there’d be plenty of space for one. And if I grow enough vegetables, it will have plenty to eat, and the milk will be sweeter too.”

“Rey—”

“I’m kidding!”

Though she has had vague ideas about a beehive. It’s the wrong time of year to be starting one, but she knows there used to be hives up on the roof of the keep, so the kitchens had their own supply of honey. There are plenty of recipes requiring royal jelly too, for bathing products, but they hardly seem like a necessity at the moment. She can cope with the lavender soap Kylo provides, even if it makes her smell of him.

Though what to make of the flowers Kylo continues to bring her, she has no idea. She likes them very much, and she has tried propagating them as the gardening books describe, but she’d rather preserve her energies for edible plants. It means his gifts to her must be left to wither and droop, buried back into the soil when they lose their loveliness. And they are gifts to her, strange as that is, not rewards. In any other place, flowers are a courting gift, but he makes no other approach to her in that regard, and she comes to view them as an extended apology: for abandoning her as he did, and for keeping her prisoner.

Sometimes, she likes to pretend Ben has brought them for her. Other times, she considers what it would be like if Kylo brought them to court her with, and she’ll eventually see beneath his mask and armor.

What a silly notion. He’s as cursed as Ben is, in that regard.

As the leaves begin to fall from the fruit trees properly, carpeting the courtyard in golden brown, Rey makes two discoveries in the library.

The first is less of a singular discovery, and more noticing a pattern. There are two sources in the library which discuss curses in any depth: magical texts, and stories.

She’s reading as much of the latter as she is of the former. When she’d told Ben she was reading his book of fairytales, he’d been eager to hear which ones she liked.

“All the ones with a good adventure,” she told him. 

“Not the romances?”

“The best stories have both, don’t they?” she deflected, trying to avoid his teasing.

“I was always told that girls prefer love stories.”

“Well I’m a girl, and I like both.”

“You must have a true favorite though,” he presses.

“The one with the dragon. Where the prince doesn’t kill the dragon but helps it get home—to it’s real home—so it will stop terrorizing the poor villages it’s nesting nearby.”

Ben snorts. “I always hated that one. I think all the stories were approved for inclusion by my mother and had to have a good moral at the center of them.”

“I thought it was sweet! The dragon was lost and needed help to get to where it should have been, and the prince didn’t slaughter it straight away even though it was the easy thing to do.”

“I’m not sure killing a dragon is all that easy—”

“You know what I mean. He didn’t think with his sword. Princes in stories are always thinking with their swords.”

“Oh, believe me, I’ve spent plenty of time thinking only with my sword.”

She doesn’t think he intends it to have a double meaning. She’s certainly not supposed to interpret it as having a double meaning. But as soon as he’s said the words, she can feel him cringe, and she has to bite her lip and look away, thinking very hard about things that aren’t Ben’s sword.

“I can’t believe you don’t like that story,” she eventually says.

“There was a lot I didn’t appreciate when I was younger, which I ought to have done.”

What Rey has never told him is which is her second favorite story from the book. That one doesn’t feature a prince, but is about a young man who’s been cursed into being a toad. He can only become a man again if his true love confesses their feelings to him—a seemingly impossible clause, given his status as said amphibian. But of course, this being a fairytale, he meets the love of his life by the pond he’s been banished to, and the shy shepherd grows to love the mysterious voice which speaks to him everyday. Three magical words—”I love you”—breaks the curse and delivers the toad back to manhood.

The same pattern is repeated over and over, even in stories not intended for children. Rey has moved onto some more grown-up reading material. She’s sure Ben would not be happy to know his mother or grandmother had once read, but their names are embossed inside the covers. These books contain dramatic stories of romance and destiny, of true love flourishing against any obstacle. It isn’t hard to see how both women had fallen for men of a lower station, given how many of the books are about noble ladies being romanced by dashing knights or rogue sailors.

It leads Rey to one conclusion. She knows what she must do to break Ben’s curse. She’s just not sure if she has the courage to do it.

The second discovery is more straightforward, and it leads on from the first in some ways. The romantic stories sometimes talk about an herb called silphium with a special purpose. Confused, Rey turns to her gardening manuals, and then the books she keeps hidden in her hammock alcove.

That’s when she realizes she needs silphium. But even though it must have been used by the women of the castle when it was still inhabited, she can’t even find seeds for it. Which means she’ll need to ask Kylo to help her get hold of some.

Two tasks, neither of which she relishes. But she knows which she’ll tackle first.

* * *

“I need silphium,” she asks Kylo mid-sword fight.

To his credit, he doesn’t falter. In fact, she’s so nervous about asking him that he gets an easy blow in, knocking his wooden practice sword into her ribs. It knocks the wind from her, pain blooming from the spot, though nothing cracks. It’ll be a nasty bruise, but no worse.

“Sloppy,” he comments. “And what have I told you? Channel the pain. You need to compartmentalize it, lock it away and ignore it until you’re safe enough to deal with any injuries. In the middle of a fight, you have to keep going, even through loss of limb.”

That just reminds her of how Trudgen had tried to do exactly that when he fought Kylo. He’d had lost his head instead. Still, she tries to do what Kylo commands, visualizing the white hot-sting of her pain and gathering it into a ball in her center. It’s not a feeling—it’s fuel.

She blocks his next blow with ease, pushing back hard enough that he has to rock back on his heels to absorb the shock of it.

“What’s silphium?” he asks, and if he’s trying to put her off balance again, it won’t work.

“It’s a plant. I need the whole plant, and some seeds too, so I can grow my own.” She slashes at his ribs, but he lumbers out of the way. For somebody so big, who isn’t particularly graceful, he moves astonishingly fast.

“But why do you need it?”

She’s rehearsed this lie, in case he wanted to know what she needs it for. She can only be thankful he doesn’t seem to have heard of it.

“It’s apparently good for healing. I want to try mixing it with bacta. And apparently it’s tasty too.”

It had been a strange looking plant in the drawing she’d seen of it, the notes indicating it would grow up to hip height with a fleshy, thick stem, and while it flowered white, inside the flower were eleven stems covered in seeds. When the petals fell away, the stems remained and the seeds could be collected, and used. Both the seeds and the root were meant to taste like anise.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

One task over and easier than she feared, Rey turns her attention to the next.

* * *

Despite managing to get the heating system working when she arrived in the castle, it still struggles at night against the drafty nature of the castle. With so many of the doors broken down and the windows shattered, what had allowed cool breezes to circulate during the hot summer nights now turns against Rey. She sets about fixing what she can, lifting the enormous doors with magic when she has to, and when magic fails her in her repair work, she uses hammers and nails from the workshops. 

But it’s a slow task, and it’s at night she feels the chill the most—even with Ben to warm her up when he’s with her—so she decides to add more blankets to the bed. There are plenty in the trunks in her chamber, and she rummages through, wondering which ones she prefers. 

Some are old, and feel like she needs to be delicate with them—which means they are carefully lifted out of the trunk and set aside, definitely not shaken out over the bed for Rey to burrow underneath. The needlework on some of the blankets is exquisite, and she wonders how many people spent hours, days, working on these patterns. There are royal insignias worked into motifs, the tiny dragon’s head and crossed swords repeated over and over. There are entire stories played out, like the stained glass pictures in miniature, from beginning to end. 

One small blanket—for a baby or toddler, she’s sure—tells the entire story of Ezra slaying the dragon on it. It’s been well cared for and mended, but she can’t help wondering how many generations this blanket has been passed down through. Did Ben ever sleep wrapped in this blanket? It seems ridiculous that a man so large could have ever fit in something this small, but he must have done at some point.

Rey picks a newer blanket, one stitched with a simple lily design, so she doesn’t feel like she’s desecrating family heirlooms by tossing and turning in them, or like she’s draping herself in the royal insignia when she has no right to it at all. It’s bad enough she’s using so much stuff that belonged to royalty—even if Ben has assured her she’s welcome to use whatever she likes.

As she’s lifting her chosen blanket out, something thumps into her lap. Something small but solid, and which fits in the palm of her hand when she fishes it out of the drapes of her tunic.

It’s a silver box. A trinket box, she thinks—she’s seen things like this before. Occasionally, when a resident of Jakku died, their dwelling would be picked clean by everybody else, and often that led to the place being dismantled to look for hidey-holes. In those hidey-holes, sometimes, were relics of their life before the war. Small boxes containing treasured jewelry, stuff that wouldn’t be traded for food with Unkar Plutt, no matter what. Wedding rings from long-gone spouses, or pendants from lost parents, or reminders of the children they’d buried. 

Rey had never had anything like that of her own, or even been lucky enough to find something to trade with Plutt. But she’d seen them enough, lurking at Plutt’s stand, to watch them being callously traded in by the people raiding the abandoned dwellings, so she’s able to recognize one now.

It’s exquisite. The silver is slightly tarnished, speaking to its age, but patterns are etched into its surface, flowing lines rippling across the metal. On one side, the royal insignia is embossed, but strangely enough, there is no opening. No matter which way up Rey turns it, the surface appears completely solid, and even when she sends threads of magic in to feel along the silver for a lock mechanism, nothing happens. It just seems to be a solid cube of metal. She puts it to one side, wrapping it back in one of the blankets, and proceeds to pile her bed high with the ones she’s chosen.

After that, she spends hours mentally rehearsing her second task in the bed. But as soon as Ben arrives that night, it seems he has one thing on his mind. He doesn’t even comment on the new blankets.

“Ben—” she whispers as he settles on the bed beside her. She flinches at the raspiness of her voice, but if he notices, he doesn’t mention it. “Ben, I have something to tell you.”

“It can wait,” he says, and then his mouth is on hers.

All thoughts evaporate from her head—he has that effect on her. She’d been right when she’d thought his mouth was made for kissing, something she’d whispered to him before she’d kissed him for the first time. It really is—soft and plush against hers. She wonders, sometimes, if he’s had practice at this before he met her. It would explain why he’s so good, why he seems to know things she doesn’t. Like how to curl his tongue that way, or how to suck on her lower lip just right. 

Now that she knows he was a prince, it makes more sense than ever. Surely all the girls in the castle had wanted his attention that way? They must have all wanted to kiss him, even if just to be able to brag about it. Then they could sit giggling with their friends about what it was like, about how he was a nice kisser and made them feel all hot and bothered when he did it.

She shouldn’t feel jealous of those long-gone, possibly made-up girls she’s imagining, but she does. She’s never kissed anyone else, and it makes her a little sad at the thought that there’s this imbalance between them.

And what if that imbalance is even bigger than she knows?

Not just if he’s done more than kissing, but what if he listens to what she wants to say and can’t return the feeling?

It turns out he isn’t able to kiss the thoughts completely out of her head, and he notices. He slows, pulling away.

“You seem distracted,” he comments, and she tries to keep him close with a hand on the back of his head. He nips at her mouth anyway but doesn’t resume.

“Sorry.” They’re close enough that when they speak, their lips still brush, and she’ll never tire of the thrill that sensation sends through her.

“You had something to tell me. I presume it’s that which is distracting you?”

“Yes.” She releases his head, never more glad for the blindfold. She doesn’t have to watch his face as she confesses to him. It’s bad enough she’ll probably be able to feel a pulse of his reaction when they’re this close together—she doesn’t need to bear witness to his confusion in any other way.

“Is it bad? You have me worried.”

“It’s not bad at all. I realized something, you see, in all the books I’ve been reading. Something very important. Something that might solve everything.”

“I suppose I really shouldn’t have kissed you and let you speak.”

She shakes her head. “Never regret kissing me.”

“I don’t.” And to illustrate it, he gives her a swift peck on the mouth, then on each cheek, and then on the chin. “It’s always an excellent way to spend my time.” But he draws back again. “What did you find?”

“I think I know how to break your curse.”

She feels his reaction—the shudder of his breath, and the matching shudder in his aura, a fizzy wave of shock. “What?”

She licks her lips. “Well, you see, all the stories, they—” She stops, tries again, unsure of how to explain it. “Ben, I—” She takes a deep breath and spills it all out in one exhale. “Iloveyou.”

Astonishingly, nothing at all comes from Ben. Not a flicker. If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought he’d vanished from the room entirely, except he hasn’t moved and she can still feel his weight on the blankets.

That’s rapidly followed by a prickling swell of emotion from him; uncomfortable when it brushes against her, and easily recognized as panic.

This isn’t exactly what she was hoping for.

Her own panic knots in her chest and then quickly turns to dismay, lodging itself in her throat as a tight, hot lump she recognizes as impending tears. Foolish girl. What did she expect?

After an hour, or perhaps a month, or a year—or maybe it was only a moment or two—Ben clears his throat. “Rey—” he begins, tentatively, but she can’t let him continue. She can’t listen to him try and let her down gently.

“I’m sorry,” she cuts in. “Forget it.”

All she knows is that the curse hasn’t been broken. She’d know. She’d feel it, magic that powerful unraveling around Ben. Nothing has changed, except her silly confession.

“Don’t be sorry. Did you think that telling me you loved me would break the curse?”

Her voice sounds small, tremulous when she replies. “Yes.”

There’s something like sad affection in his voice when he speaks again. “I wish it were that simple.”

She sniffs. “Maybe you need to love me too for it to work.”

To her astonishment, she feels his hand rise to cup her face. “No, silly girl. If I needed to love you, the curse would have been lifted months ago.”

She gasps, and instead of fading away, the tears come hotter, faster. They soak into the rags around her eyes and then spill down her cheeks, and Ben’s come thumb caresses them away.

“Why are you crying?” he asks. 

“I thought you didn’t love me,” she says, and she sounds like a sobbing child even to her own ears.

“But I do.”

She nods against his hand. Yet something inside her disagrees with him anyway. If she loves him, and he loves her, why hasn’t anything changed? It can only mean he doesn’t feel the same way about her as she does about him, even if he says he does. She’d felt his reaction to her words—that’s not the response of somebody who feels true love. Instead, she tries to bottle up her disappointment and lock it away.

“You’re still cursed,” she points out.

“I am. But that’s only because Snoke would never build a curse with such an obvious, sentimental way of breaking it.”

She sniffs again. “It’s not up to him to decide how the curse will be broken,” she says. “I’ve read all about them. You can make a curse, but its flaw, the way to undo it—that’s up to the curse alone. Snoke will know what it is, though.”

“He’ll never tell,” Ben says sadly.

“Love makes the most sense. If you’re a hidden prince and nobody can look at your face, then how could anybody love you?”

“I’ve asked myself the same thing plenty.”

“Except I do!”

“It must be something else,” Ben concedes. “Though I’m not sad about it, not if I got to hear you say those words.”

She lays a hand on his chest and gives him a gentle shove. “Shut up.”

“I won’t.” He traps her hand by covering it with his own. Right above his heart. “You’ll have to make me.”

So she does.

* * *

Rey keeps searching. It’s not as though anybody has ever accused her of being anything but stubborn. Kylo brings her silphium, and he is oddly stiff when he delivers it to her in place of her usual bouquet. A handful of harvested plants, and a packet of seeds.

She thanks him, and he stares at her in silence before turning and walking away. 

Autumn brings more rain than Rey has ever seen in her life. It was a rarity in Jakku, a cause of celebration—the  _ only _ cause of celebration. A time to drag out buckets and pots and any other receptacle to collect as much water as possible, to then decant into skins and hoard it. Fights to the death had occurred over rainwater collection.

Here, she delights in the rain at first. Dancing out in the courtyard until she realizes that without the Jakku sun, she quickly becomes cold and clammy, her clothes sticking to her in uncomfortable ways. 

She needs to lay her wet clothes near the furnace to let them dry. So it’s hardly her fault that she’s stripped down to her undergarments to lay out her wet clothes near the furnace to let them dry, when Kylo comes stomping in from wherever he’s been.

He promptly turns around and stomps back out, and she doesn’t see him for the rest of the day. Rey is dimly aware of the concept of modesty, but she’s never seen much need for it, and she’s not going to start caring about it now, even if he has seen her in her ratty old breastband and stockings.

Quite apart from discovering that rain isn’t as pleasant without accompanying heat, she soon discovers that it’s not a scarce resource and actually a bit of a nuisance. It forces her lessons with Kylo to move from the courtyard and into the mess hall, which is dark and dusty and much less pleasant.

At least her little garden likes all the rain.

Most of all, the constant rain forces her into the library with Kylo now more than ever. Only now, it seems less like Kylo is assigning her texts to read, and more as though they are both reading the material which suits them. Like two scholars inhabiting the same space, and then debating what they’ve read afterwards.

“I suppose I should be thankful you aren’t assigning me essays to write,” she quips one afternoon, and then immediately regrets it. She really shouldn’t give him any awful ideas.

“I considered it,” he replies. “Until I realized I would have to read them to mark them. And that means looking at your handwriting for longer than I can stand.”

“Hey!” 

“It’s true. Your handwriting is awful.”

“And I suppose yours is so wonderful?”

“As it happens, it is. I’m an excellent calligrapher.”

“I didn’t know they taught calligraphy wherever it is they teach people to be deadly warriors.”

“Everybody had to learn it in the castle.”

Then, as if realizing what he’s said, he tries to change the subject. “Perhaps we should look more at that work by Howell. It might enlighten us on that question you had about—”

“You grew up here. In the castle.”

Oh, it makes sense now. Of  _ course _ he did. That accent, so uncannily like Ben’s. Not quite Coruscanti. Whatever Kylo’s quarrel had been with the throne, whatever had driven him to Snoke’s cause, it was something to do with his time here in the castle. And Snoke had spent time in the castle too, hadn’t he? That’s where they’d crossed paths.

He doesn’t respond, not even with his body language. But isn’t that a kind of response of its own? That stillness, she has come to learn, means he is working very hard to contain and control himself. Which means the answer to her assertion is, of course, yes.

She decides the best thing she can do right now is change the subject. Kylo doesn’t seem inclined to start talking about his history, no matter how curious she is. 

“I’m ready to stretch. Should we spar?”

She’s barely finished asking before he whisks her down to the mess hall.

“We should concentrate on your forms,” Kylo says as they descend the stairs. “You need to practice Niman more.” Out of all the fighting styles, they’ve discovered Niman suits her the most, allowing her to wield either a sword or her staff, and it allows her to outmaneuver opponents even when they are substantially larger or more powerful than she is. At least, in theory. She’s still yet to best Kylo, even if he does tell her it’s because he’s one of the best fighters she’ll ever encounter. Without a hint of humility.

But the warm-up he insists on before the fight commences gives her mind a chance to wander back to her revelation. Who had Kylo been before he became Snoke’s disciple? What was his role in the castle? Was he a soldier or a knight—had he been picked for his strength and magical abilities? If so, why had he turned against the throne to support Snoke? What could have possibly happened that made him betray everyone in the place he’d considered his home?

But it does make a kind of sense, now that she considers it. His reactions, sometimes, to the ruined pieces of this place. It must be eerie coming back here and facing it as an empty shell.

If only she had anyone to ask about Kylo’s origins. A peer, a contemporary, somebody who’d spent time in the castle with him before the fall.

Maybe there is somebody.

* * *

Despite everything, sometimes Ben reappears with more wounds. She hates it—she can feel it before he arrives now. It’s clear to her in his slower pace, in his halting movements, in the raw edge of his presence that feels like it’s bleeding. They don’t kiss on the nights he comes to her like this—instead she applies the bacta, and they talk quietly when it’s done.

Tonight is no exception. She doesn’t know what happened, only that Kylo was gone for the day, and now Ben is coming to her with fresh stripes painted down his back. She can see them in her mind’s eye, even if she can’t look at them, and they make her want to weep every time.

She’s been anticipating it all day, right since Kylo’s note informing her he wouldn’t be around. It guided her choices in the library today.

Ben knows their routine as well as she does, so he fetches the pot of poultice before he even sits down. But despite the pain, he does manage to press a kiss to her forehead, before he turns and presents his back to her.

For the first time, she doesn’t unscrew the lid. Instead she places the pot carefully on the blanket beside her.

“Don’t be alarmed,” she starts.

“Do you realize that saying that only makes people worry?”

“Sssh.” She reaches out and places a gentle palm between his shoulder blades, careful not to press on any wounds. “I’m going to try something new.”

“What are—” But his question is cut off when she starts working. “ _ Ohhhh. _ ”

His moan is low and soft, deep in his throat, and she’s not sure whether it’s of pleasure or pain. Probably pain, she assumes, just like the sting of bacta onto a cut. 

But she’s not applying bacta at all. Instead, she’s healing directly with magic, taking some of her own energy and using it to knit the broken edges of his skin back together. She has to feel with her mind, slipping into a fugue state so the only thing she’s really aware of is the rise and fall of Ben’s back beneath her hand. She sinks into his skin, searching for the pain, soothing it with little kisses of magic just like she kisses any bruises he comes to her with.

Ben’s presence takes on a strange energy, shifting rapidly as her fingers move—she thinks it’s his response to the pain, but it stutters at first, then crests with his shallow breaths. It’s like she’s been showered in a little cascade of sparks, this close to him, and she doesn’t understand it at all. After that, he’s less restless, calmer. 

Despite the large meal she’d eaten this evening—a deliberate departure from her enforced strict limits on food—she grows tired all too quickly.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him, and her voice sounds a little slurred to her own ears. “I’ll have to do the rest with bacta.”

“Don’t worry. S’good.” Ben sounds relaxed, even pleasure-drunk in a way she’s never heard before. “That was incredible.”

“I read about it and wanted to try it,” she tells him as she begins to apply the paste to his remaining wounds. Her fingers still tingle with the memory of the magic moving through her as she worked. “Not that—I wasn’t trying to use you as an experiment. I was confident it would work, or I wouldn’t have tried.”

“I know,” he says. “I trust you.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Not really. At first, it felt a little strange. Rather like that feeling when you’ve sat in a position too long and your leg goes numb. But then it felt…nice. Really soothing. I—um, liked it.”

She hears him hesitate and swallow, and knows there’s more to it. She knows—because she’s read about this too. Not just in the texts about spirit energy, but the ones that talked about what a man and woman might do together. How energy generated together could be siphoned into healing. Male and female energies are supposed to combine and create life, but that energy can be channeled elsewhere instead—and the silphium she is taking stops the creation of life, so the energy  _ must _ go somewhere else. Perhaps she could even create more to use to finish healing him, even though she feels depleted right now.

And is Ben’s sated, radiant energy a side effect of what she’s been doing to him—that after being healed, Ben feels like they’ve lain together?

“Ben—” She smears her fingers clean on a section of skin on his back which is untouched. Then, tentatively, she slides her hand around to his front. Where his solid muscles flex under her touch, and when she moves her palm higher, she can feel how solidly muscled he is, everywhere. She wants to press her face against his skin, but they’ve never been that close before, and she doesn’t know how he’ll react. “Do you trust me?”

He nods wordlessly, and he’s almost panting. She coaxes him to turn towards her, and despite the fact that she was able to heal so little, he doesn’t protest the movement. When she kisses him, he doesn’t protest that either.

One hand remains on the hard muscle of his chest, but the other slides around towards his back. And as they kiss, she lets the heat build between them, its own kind of magic—and she pushes that into the patchwork of his skin.

He grunts, but does not pull away, and for the first time his control frays a little as he kisses her, his fingers tightening around her waist before gliding upwards.

It’s her turn to gasp, leaning into his touch. He doesn’t do more than hold her at first, and kisses her more intently, like he’s trying to distract her with his mouth from what his hands are doing. But her body responds to him, blooming and tightening, and he must feel it—the way she’s taut, caught right in the center of his palm.

They move, and she ends up above him, splayed around one of his thighs. She thinks he’s trying to devour her, one firm hand against her lower back while she grinds down on his thigh, frustrated at the layers of linen between them, her underthings and his breeches. He seems shocked to discover her own thighs—normally covered by the blankets—are bare, and he guides her even further upwards, so he can wrap his mouth around her breast.

There’s so much sensation, even if they aren’t touching each other’s naked skin. The veil between them still exists, his mouth frustrated by cloth, her soaking through the fabric onto his thigh. She’s not sure whether the added friction adds to the experience or not. 

Through all of it, she keeps a hand on his shoulder—she can’t move too much, not when she’s chasing this maddening sensation, this itch that’s just out of reach. It’s more intense than when she touches herself, not concentrated in one place, and because she doesn’t know what his next move will be, how he will suck or tease her with his teeth, it’s unsettling. Exhilarating.

She has to change the angle, to keep that hand on his naked skin, pushing the magic building within her back into him. She doesn’t need to direct it like she does when applying bacta—instead it spreads through Ben’s skin, looking for the cracks, searching for the wounds, finding all the places he needs stitching back together. Where she’d been tired before, now she’s on fire, unable to stop moving, the energy coiling within her legs rushing out through her fingers and into Ben. 

And when it crests, it does it in a burst of hot white behind her eyes, like sparks from a smith’s forge, and there’s so much of the energy it spills out around them, dissipating into the air while she clings to Ben and shudders against him.

She’s heavy-lidded, boneless. She wants nothing more than to melt into him, properly, to fuse with him like they’re one being. And as she slumps, she can feel the evidence of him wanting her pressed up against her thigh.

She shifts against it and that seems to break the spell for him. He pulls away from her—mouth and fingers—even as she pushes herself back towards him.

“Don’t stop,” she begs him. “Please. I liked it.”

But he doesn’t return to her, even as his breath gusts across her as he pants. “You don’t know what you’re asking, Rey.”

“I do,” she tells him firmly. “I know what I want.”

She can feel him shaking his head. “It isn’t right.”

She feels a surge of sour emotions rising within her—a thorny, complicated tangle of them. Shame and fear warring for dominance as she suspects he’s rejecting her, and they flow from her to instinctively protect herself the way they always do: with anger.

Rey abruptly shifts away from Ben. “I’m sorry, your highness,” she tells him coldly. “I didn’t know you were so traditional.”

“Rey—”

“I should have realized. Of course you wouldn’t want to lower yourself to consorting with the likes of me.”

“It’s not that, and you know it.” He reaches for her, tentative touches on her face that fall away when she doesn’t melt into him.

“Do I? Because everything I’ve ever heard about men says they’ll do just about anything to bed a woman.”

“Not every man is like that,” he murmurs.

“No. You’re a prince. I suppose you were brought up to only believe people should be intimate when they’re married, but—”

She hears Ben snort softly. “Now what kind of hypocrites would my parents have been if they tried to teach me that?”

Her mouth drops open in shock. “You can’t say things like that!”

“I can, because it’s the truth. I can count, you know. The story of my parents’ marriage was always told as this great love, but honestly, I often thought they only got married because of me. As many rules as my father broke during his life, getting a queen pregnant and not marrying her would have been a step too far.” 

He seems both wistful and slightly bitter about it. It’s strange, hearing that perspective on it, when all she’s ever heard is that Queen Leia and her consort had been an epic romance, bonding on the battlefield and off. 

“Then are you judging me?” she whispers. “For being so forward.”

“Not at all. Rey, I have my reasons for not wanting to go further than we have, and they’re all about trying to do the right thing by you.”

“I can make decisions for myself.”

“I know you can. Yet there are still things you don’t know. Things I can’t tell you. And if you don’t know them, it’s not even right that I’m kissing you.”

She presses a finger over his mouth, shushing him. “I know you. I know the core of you. Nothing else matters.”

“It does to me.”

And because it wouldn’t be fair to him to press the matter further, to insist on something she wants but he doesn’t, she lets it drop. Instead she enjoys the plumpness of his lips against her fingertips, the way he’s drowsily nuzzling into her hand.

He doesn’t speak for a few minutes, and they slip back into the state of semi-drugged bliss they’d been in when they first finished kissing, but she can practically hear the wheels turning in his brain. At least until he opens his mouth to ask.

“How did you even know how to heal me like that?”

“I read about that too. There’s a lot of potential there, since we’re both magic users.”

His laugh is short and sharp. “Rey, I’m not going to do more than kiss you just so you can try to heal my wounds. That’s preposterous.”

“That’s not the only reason why I want to do more than kiss!” she insists. “I want you to touch me. I—I’ve started taking silphium in preparation.”

“To stop a pregnancy,” he says, and there’s a darkness to his tone she doesn’t understand. “Or so I’ve been told.”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps you should rest. You’ve spent a lot of energy healing me as it is.”

She clamps her mouth closed. This isn’t how she intended for this to go. “Please stay a while longer. We don’t have to kiss, or even talk if you don’t want to.”

“You know I’ll never turn down the opportunity to spend time with you.” He presses his forehead against hers, and despite the flare of—shock? annoyance?—she can still feel the effect of her magic lingering on him. 

She knows what to call it now. Arousal. And it pulses within her too.

“We can talk if you want to,” he mumbles.

“I do have a question.”

“Hmmm?” Despite his protests, his nose nuzzles into her cheek, like he’s trying to find new ways of touching her.

“Did you know Kylo when he lived in the castle?”

He shifts against her, and the after effects of her touch sings within him. Even though a sharp note sounds at her question—and she supposes that’s natural, since she’s reminded Ben of his captor. It doesn’t completely overpower the sweeter notes underneath, the ones that resonate within her.

She realizes that despite her attempts to remain still, her fingers have made her way into his hair. It’s always silky-soft, the finest thing she’s found in the castle despite all the riches she’s encountered. She’s reminded of the portrait down in the dungeons, and the shredded remains of Ben’s face—the closest she might ever come to seeing it for real. His hair had appeared lustrous and soft there, but no artist could capture the feeling of it against the pads of her fingers.

And Ben does not pull away. Instead he leans into her touch, letting her make small circles, and there’s a low keening coming from his throat that isn’t so dissimilar from BB-8 purring. 

“Ben?” she prompts when he doesn’t respond to her question.

“Hmm?” 

His sleepiness radiates out towards her and reignites her earlier tiredness. She really ought to sleep since she’s used so much magic, but she doesn’t want to say goodbye to Ben for the night. Not when it’s still so early.

“Did you know Kylo before all of this?”

He shifts, and she feels that flare of discord again. “I wish we could stay like this forever.”

He’s avoiding her question, and she feels a stab of shame. Of course he doesn’t want to think about Kylo, not in a moment like this. They’ve been as intimate as they’ve ever been not five minutes ago, and now she’s trying to bring up the subject of his captor.

“One day, we’ll never have to part,” she promises him. “We’ll be able to really sleep in each other’s arms. Without a blindfold or the darkness between us.”

“That’s one of things I love about you.” And oh, she still thrills when he says that word. “Your optimism.”

“Is it optimism, or is it stubbornness?”

“I love it either way. I love you.”

She curls up more firmly against him, enjoying just how strong and solid he is. She’d never have to fear anything in his arms, not if they faced it together. 

Except Snoke, maybe. And even then—it’d be worth it, with Ben.

“You know, there was one other way all the stories talk about breaking a curse.” She’s so tired, barely able to keep her mouth moving, but it’s important that Ben knows this. 

She feels him brush back her hair from her forehead. “Was it through stubbornness?”

“No. It was marriage.” She snuggles in closer, liking the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes, the heat of him, the scent of him—lavender soap and a hint of sweat. “It was marrying their true love.”

Whatever Ben’s response is, she doesn’t hear it. She’s already asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: silphium was an herb/plant used by Roman women to prevent pregnancy, and they used it so much it went extinct. So I tossed some in Rey's direction.
> 
> Follow me on [Tumblr](https://cellar-darlings.tumblr.com/) for a teaser of chapter eighteen on December 19th.


	19. Chapter Eighteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Rey remembers discussing marriage before she fell asleep, she doesn’t mention it the next morning. Nor does Kylo, even if her words are burned into his memory. He is, underneath it all, a coward.
> 
> But he turns the words over and over throughout the next day. Marrying their true love. Had it been a suggestion? A real one, a real solution she intended to follow through on if she thought it would break his curse?
> 
> Had her words been a proposal?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you get confused...yes, I've changed my name! I thought this was a little more appropriate for my favourite pairing.
> 
> This is the longest chapter yet - it covers a lot of ground. Warnings for violence and sexual content in this chapter, plus light description of a wound. And unfortunately, Snoke in all of his...Snokeness.
> 
> Thanks, as ever to my beta Reylonging, for constantly throwing ideas at me to improve this story.

If Rey remembers discussing marriage before she fell asleep, she doesn’t mention it the next morning. Nor does Kylo, even if her words are burned into his memory. He is, underneath it all, a coward.

But he turns the words over and over throughout the next day. Marrying their true love. Had it been a suggestion? A real one, a real solution she intended to follow through on if she thought it would break his curse?

Had her words been a proposal?

Kylo has never really entertained the idea of proposing marriage. Marriage was a near-certainty when he was growing up; an obligation, a duty. But the proposal itself was never something he’d expected to have any hand in.

He’d always been aware that a suitable match would be arranged by his mother and her advisers, to avoid him ending up with someone as unsuitable as his father. To avoid the problems Leia and Han's marriage had faced, despite their obvious affection for each other. 

No, Kylo had never expected much choice in the matter at all.

He knows that normally one person proposes to the other—the ultimate declaration of love, except for the marriage vows themselves—and the question is usually accompanied by a valued piece of family jewelry. But he’s never imagined himself doing it because he’d never expected to have the opportunity—and now it seems Rey’s stolen it.

Of course, even if her suggestion had been serious, it’s clear she was doing it for his benefit, and his benefit alone. She may have told him she loves him, but she couldn’t be eager to marry him. 

Kylo had dismissed her first attempt to break his curse, as it was outside of their control. Love couldn’t break this curse. But deep down, he’s not so sure. After all, don’t the stories always say that it has to be true love?

No matter how he feels about Rey—how serious his feelings are, how convinced he is that he will never love another person like he loves her, that his love for her is the sun in his sky and can never be eclipsed—it can’t work the same way. She doesn’t really know him. How could partial love, uninformed love, break his curse? She has more chances at love, outside of the walls of this castle; she may not understand that, but the magic does.

Which is why he doesn’t even seriously consider the possibility of marrying Rey at all. He knows he’d happily marry her, without hesitation, but he cannot bring himself to let her make vows to him, just to prove his curse is unbreakable. So when she drifts off to sleep without allowing him to respond, he doesn’t bother rousing her to discuss the matter.

Of course, that’s not the only thing that happened the night before. He’d walked away from Rey’s bed, after tucking her sleeping form back into the blankets, a sticky, frustrated mess.

He’d lost control. Something about her healing him had overtaken all his senses—the sensation of her sweet, bright magic sinking into his skin and making him whole had been the most intense pleasure he’s felt in many years. After all the time he’d spent denying himself sensory delights, of even touching himself, to suddenly have her under his skin—and then pressed up against him—

He’d embarrassed himself, even if Rey hadn’t realized that. But just her touch on his back, the prickly pain of her stitching him back together, had left him on the edge, and then when they’d kissed, he’d been done for. It was like waking up as an adolescent again, dreams interrupted by the high of release, only this time Snoke wasn’t even an afterthought. Kylo had been too consumed with Rey.

And consumed was entirely the right word for it. The way he’d mouthed at her chest…

Like an animal.

His only saving grace was that he’d felt her own pleasure, bright and heady. It was hard to miss, the way she’d used it to feed her magic back into him, and he’d never known it was possible to climax twice without even being touched, but he’d almost managed it. She’d done that to him.

Now his skin feels oversensitized. His clothes, his armor, which he’s been wearing for so many years that they don’t even register to him anymore, are suddenly rough and unbearable. Everything feels too rough except for Rey herself. The air, the cold water he douses himself in, all too much.

He wants to do one thing, and one thing alone, and that’s run away. Get himself away from Rey before he throws himself at her feet and begs her to have pity on him, to let him touch her in the ways his dreams taunt him with. He’s barely able to restrain himself, so consumed with the need, and worse, he thinks she’d let him. But she doesn’t know what she’s asking for. She can’t, or she wouldn’t want it at all.

Straight after leaving her bed—and taking a detour to his refresher to wash the stickiness away and don a clean pair of pants—he heads to the library. He doesn’t even put the mask on tonight, since he’s quite sure Rey will sleep soundly until morning.

He’s concerned about what she’s been reading. He hasn’t peeked since he first returned from his unnecessary absence, when he realized he’d be violating her privacy to look at what she reads. But now, knowing she tried experimental magic on him, magic he hadn’t taught her—he must know what else she’s been absorbing. Does she have any escape plans that could backfire on her? Does she have other plans that involve risky magic, magic even he doesn’t know about?

The library seems to be judging him as he enters, more so than usual. Can it still smell Rey on him, like he can still taste her in his mouth? Can it feel the weight of her in his hand and the shape of her against his tongue?

He shuts the judgment out—even if it is just his own imagination working against him. Then he turns his focus on the room, reaching out with his mind. Searching for the traces Rey has left behind on the books she’s touched.

They light up in his mind’s eye, like a trail of glitter she’s left behind. He follows the trail, checking the spines of volumes before deciding whether he needs to investigate further or not. 

She really has read so much, even if it’s only a fraction of the content available. He can see where she’s been drawn to certain subjects, the shelves about gardens and cooking shimmering bright enough to glow. Engineering, warfare, she’s largely ignored. Entire swathes of magical theory have been picked through and skipped over, but the texts about spirit energy have been heavily visited. It’s these that Kylo collects together, examining the pages for the residue she’s left behind.

It takes him hours—skimming through each book until he finds where her attention has really been caught. And although some of it she could apply practically, as she has done with the concept of healing, most of it dwells in questions raised by ancient mages. 

He’s intrigued, but not by the texts. By Rey. She’s grappling with the kind of topics he’s never been interested in; she’s intellectually invested in the hows and whys of magic in a way he never has been. She’s a much better student than he ever was—in fact, she’d probably be a better keeper and resident for the library. He’s sure the library would agree, if he was given the opportunity to ask it.

Dawn is rising by the time he’s looked at half of what she’s read, and he knows he can’t teach her today. Not without sleep. He leaves a note on the bureau, telling her to read as much as she likes, and he’ll be back tomorrow. Then he retreats to the tower room, to hide from the sun and his many dilemmas.

* * *

He should have known that where he lacks courage, Rey does not.

First, she insists on checking his back as soon as he comes to her chamber. She finishes her work so his skin is—if not smooth and perfect—at least intact. All his wounds sealed, his bruises soothed. It leaves them both drowsy and eager at the same time, though to his credit, he manages to control himself enough not to physically spill over himself this time.

Then, before he can distract her with kisses, she begins talking.

“I fell asleep before we finished talking last night.”

He shrugs, sure that with her hands still on his shoulders, she will feel the gesture. “You were tired. I don’t blame you.”

“No, but it was important. What I was saying.”

“Rey—”

“Have you thought about it at all?”

“Thought about what?”

Her next word is breathy, as if she’s trying not to say it out loud. “Marriage.”

“I’ve already said—I don’t think anything like that will have an effect on the curse, no matter how much we might wish it would.”

“It’s worth a try. Or it would be, if it were possible.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think we can get married while we’re still trapped in the castle. I don’t know much about it, but I’ve read all the stories. The ceremony and the celebration—we don’t have anybody to perform the ceremony for us. Or any of the paperwork. And I hardly think Kylo would agree to it.”

Kylo finds himself laughing. You’d be surprised what he’d agree to, for you, he thinks. “That’s a wedding, and none of it is technically necessary.”

For a moment, he lets himself remember. His mother had told him the story often—how she and his father exchanged vows in front of one of his father’s friends, a minor noble named Calrissian. They’d had to stage a proper wedding later on, when the war was over and his mother was crowned. But to ensure the marriage commenced long before Kylo arrived, they’d first married as hastily and with as little fuss as they could.

Kylo shakes his head. “A marriage can be based on two people exchanging vows, and keeping to them.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It’s—it’s its own kind of magic, in a way. If you mean the words you say, if you intend to keep your promises, then your vows are more binding than any certificate you might be issued with.”

He never did ask his mother what vows she said to his father, or vice versa. Or whether either of them truly kept to them. It’s hard to imagine his father managing to keep his word to anyone, or saying anything with enough sincerity for it to count. But he must have done, otherwise the castle wouldn’t have welcomed him like a royal when he arrived.

Kylo realizes his misstep too late. Rey is smiling too wide.

“So we can do that then?” But she picks up on his hesitation, her smile dropping immediately. “Unless you don’t want to.”

He brushes a wisp of hair behind her ear. “Nothing would make me happier than to have you as my wife.”

“And yet, you’re refusing.” She twists her hands in her lap. “Is it because you’re supposed to marry a princess, or a noblewoman?”

“Rey, your station is irrelevant. I have no throne to offer you.”

“Then what is it?”

“Just because that’s a valid way of getting married, doesn’t mean we should. You deserve more than vows muttered in the dark of night to a stranger.”

“You’re not a stranger!”

“I am, though. I am. You don’t know the half of me—you don’t know all the things I’ve done—and you can’t make binding vows to somebody you don’t really know.”

“You’re wrong. I do know you, and I don’t care what you say. We’ve all done terrible things, but you’re no Snoke. It’s my choice.”

“Rey.” He sighs. “I want to give you everything you’ve read about. The ceremony, the witnesses, the celebration surrounded by people we love—”

“I don’t love anybody. Except you. So what does it matter if there’s nobody here except us?”

“Because of what I want for you. And I can’t give it to you.”

She nods, stiffly, and he’s not sure she’s understood him at all. “Fine. Then I’ll keep searching. If not for a way to break the curse, then a way to free us. We can look for somebody who might know other ways.”

“And there’s the stubbornness.”

“You have no idea.”

* * *

“There’s one important technique I’ve neglected to teach you.”

Rey is fussing with her new cowl, the one she’s fashioned out of his old cowl. It’s a little big for her, but she’d needed a warmer garment to wear over her clothes while they train. The mess hall is perpetually drafty due to its missing doors. The library is warm enough, a beneficiary of the underfloor heating, but those pipes were never installed in here. It’s cold in the way that only places built of stone can be, like the very fabric of the place sucks up the dank, chilly air and then leaches it out like an anti-furnace. That’s no good for Rey, who isn’t used to cold weather at all, and so he’d decided an old garment of his had been the most appropriate solution.

It’s not because he likes seeing her in it, instead of going to ask Dasha Tekka for help.

Rey stops fussing at his words and snaps to attention. “Go on.”

“You need to be able to shield yourself.”

She frowns. “Like, keep someone out of my head? I know how to do that.”

“No. You need to be undetectable to anybody trying to search for you with magic.”

Her eyes widen. “Like the library nooks?” 

“Exactly.”

He should have shown her this long ago. The castle itself keeps her hidden from Snoke’s ever-hungry gaze, but out in the world beyond its walls, she will need to be able to hide herself on her own. Hide her magic, which has only bloomed further in the months she’s been here. And she needs to be able to do it consistently, even when she’s asleep. If she won’t learn to use offensive magic, then she needs to know how to hide herself more than anything else he can teach her.

* * *

As soon as Rey retires to her chamber at dusk—which is much earlier than it used to be, with winter firmly taking hold—Kylo locks himself in the library. He’s anxious to finish looking through her book pile, especially knowing she’ll be in her bed soon. Given everything that’s happened between them in that bed lately, he can’t drag his thoughts away from the matter.

It’s like he’s been seized by fever. He has to know what she knows. He has a few hours to explore what she’s been looking at before he has to go to her again.

He has to know all of it.

He does little more than glance at the titles on the spines of certain stories she's become entranced by. He knows where their contents have led her, much like the stories on the lower shelves once led him to an obsession with dragons and adventure.

She took a brief interest in history—the history of the kingdom and the castle, and she’s looked at plenty of maps. He hopes she hasn’t made copies or committed any of these to memory, because they’ve become so out of date after Snoke’s blight that they won’t do her much good.

But no—he can tell, by how heavily her energy lies over the corner of one map. Like she’s been leaning on the paper.

It’s Jakku, illustrated in greenery as it once grew. She hadn’t been leaning on the paper at all. Perhaps stroking it instead. For a place that was so hostile to her, he supposes it is the only real home she has ever known. Sometimes when she speaks of it, he can tell she carries a certain nostalgia for it. Maybe not for her own life there, but for all the life that was snuffed out by the Imperial Guard when Kylo took her away.

He still can’t find it within himself to feel sorry for that, though he supposes he should. These were people who, in another life, would have been his subjects. They wouldn’t have been forced to live such harsh, brutal lives, if Jakku hadn’t been sucked dry of its life. Yet, he has no pity to spare for the wretches who treated Rey so abominably. Especially the toad-like man who’d tried to leverage Rey—what had he been called? It doesn’t matter. He’s no more than the dust rising from this map.

In the end, Rey’s magic guides him into her hidden reading space. It isn’t hers, really, but she found it fair and square, and it thrives with her energy. Who else would string a hammock across the space like this? And it’s hardly a place he would ever try to lay claim to, as awkward as it is trying to fold himself inside.

Her stack of books are abandoned on the bench, and they’re so richly drenched with her energy they might as well be on fire. He lowers himself to his knees carefully, aiming to keep away from anything she’s touched apart from the books themselves. He doesn’t deserve to be here in her space, but he’s invading anyway. And he can tell himself it’s for her safety as much as he likes, but he knows it’s only for his own curiosity and nerves.

Now that he’s decided to set her free—soon, when she’s ready—he’ll drink up as much of her as he can, while he can. But he also needs to know what she knows before he does.

He wants to weep when he notices the top of her stack is still filled with the fairytales Ben was gifted as a child. Does she keep coming back to them like he once did, going over and over even though she can practically recite the words by heart?

Below that, a volume of flower illustrations. Again, she has favorite sections she returns to, blooms she has traced the outline of with her fingers until it appears as if the illustrator has imprinted the page with glowing ink. He flicks through, but finds no reference to the silphium she’d requested, which is growing proudly in the kitchen garden. Nor did he find any reference to it in the healing recipes he’s skimmed—which means it really does only have one purpose, and she sought it out for exactly that purpose.

And that purpose becomes clear at the last handful of books. She hasn’t taken them out again since he first snooped in here, but it’s evident just how much she has read them. How closely too, when he observes the patterns of her magic on the pages.

He settles onto the bench, lifting his mask off and placing it at his feet. It makes him feel a little less monstrous about what he’s doing.

These books—the ones he kept finding all over the library, like it was taunting him—are now ones Rey has consulted more often than any magical text in the castle. And that terrifies him.

What does she think he—Ben—wants from her? How can he make her understand?

He burns at the memory of asking Dasha Tekka for silphium, thinking it nothing but a healing herb, only to have her smiling, delighted face explain its real purpose…

“She liked the flowers, then?” she’d asked, and Kylo hadn’t been able to find a single word to explain his request or deny her assumptions. He’d only been left with questions of his own, wondering at Rey’s true purpose for the plant.

He begins flicking through the books, following the trail left by her magic, and then…begins reading.

It’s nothing like he expected.

For years, he’s been bombarded with the men around him bragging about their deeds, rejoicing in the reluctance of women. And yet, it turns out—women might actually like intimacy.

Sex. He needs to call it what it is. Sex.

Women don’t do just do it because they want children. They do it because it brings them pleasure too. He’d known that, sort of distantly, the way Rey had fallen apart on him last night, but it’s something else reading it in black-and-white. Women like to have sex. With men, or with women, or with themselves, or all of the above. Sometimes all at once, according to the more creative illustrations.

It turns out, women just don’t want to have sex with Hux or any of the Guard. Not that Kylo can blame them.

All those years of Hux calling him ugly, and now Kylo has a woman apparently willing to be intimate with him?

Like Rey had been before him, Kylo becomes enthralled with what the books describe. He knows, roughly, how his body works. What it might like, if he ever went down that path.

Rey. It likes Rey. Rey touching him, in any capacity. His dreams have made that very clear.

But he’s only ever had a vague grasp of the anatomy of women, since the only naked ones he’s seen were either drawings and statues. One of the books has very clear illustrations with very in-depth instructions.

It’s truly like scales have fallen away from his eyes, his imagination taking flight with every drawing. Some of it’s still a little hazy—how it would feel, precisely, to be inside Rey—but he knows how warm she is, how soft, how slight against him. He knows what her breath sounds like when it hitches. He knows her scent—he especially knows the scent of her arousal, since it’s been lingering in his nostrils since he left her chamber.

So it’s easy to look at one etching and imagine her beneath him, pliant and warm. It’s easy to turn the page and fantasize about where else to put his mouth on her body—to extrapolate her scent and turn it into a taste. He can look at a diagram and, just like Rey has done, run his fingers over the page, tracing the lines, and in his mind he is practicing what it would be like to touch her skin and bring her to pleasure. 

There are so many ways for two people to enjoy each other. So many positions to connect in. So many ways to gather Rey close to him and take solace in her body, to worship her and paint his love across her skin with his fingers and tongue.

But he won’t do that. No matter how intrigued she may be, or prepared she is. It would be—

It would be a violation. Despite all her protests. 

But his body isn’t listening to his mind. His body is only interested in the visions his imagination has been concocting, and now his skin is tight and flushed, his breathing shallow, his body demanding…everything.

He can’t do that here. Not in her sanctuary.

He carefully replaces the books, then his helmet, and leaves, stealing back across the castle to the tower room, where he disrobes enough for his nightly visit to Rey. But he can’t go see her in his current worked up state—she will know something is wrong as soon as he arrives. She will want to remedy it.

He seeks his usual solution of cold water, but even that won’t persuade his body to calm down, even when uses so much he’s shivering. Something about all they’ve done over the last few days, and what he’s seen in those books—the new knowledge that he can make Rey feel good, and it’s not a duty she is offering to perform out of pity—means his body now refuses to let go of the promise of more.

In the end, he relents. Takes himself in hand in a way he’s only ever done in the middle of the night, when he’s woken from a dream with his hand already in his breaches.

It doesn’t take much. He just has to pretend his calluses are Rey’s, that she is pressed up against him, that her mouth is against his throat. White light blinds him, and he doesn’t so much grunt as whimper, low in his throat, as his toes curl and he spends himself against the elaborate tile of the refresher. 

It washes away with the icy water, but the feeling doesn’t fade as quickly.

He dresses, still shivering, and even that isn’t all from the cold. He’s hypersensitive, his skin still prickly and tight, and he’s not sure he can go to Rey tonight like this. Not at all.

Which is, of course, when she calls to him. 

_ Ben? What was that? _

Her words cut through everything else. He moves to the tower door, his face pressed against it with his hands spread out across the wood like he’s lying on the floor. Just too much of a coward to go through it.

He doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Nothing’s happened. What has she noticed? He lifts his head but doesn’t move, trying to feel his way through the entire castle, searching for signs of an intruder. Impossible, but Rey has excellent senses. Something must have concerned her enough to reach out to him.

He tries to reply, but of course—he can’t do that. He doesn’t know how. He should have been more concerned with looking that up in the books than what he was actually reading.

_ Ben. Please. I’m worried. You’d normally be here by now. I know you’re in the castle! I can feel you.  _

She shouldn’t be able to. He’s too open to her, after what he’s read, what he’s done. The cage he usually builds around himself has been blown wide open, and he doesn’t know how to close it. And he can’t reach her, like she can reach him.

It means he has to go to her, and the descent down the stairs feels like it takes hours. Luckily, the cat has made himself scarce, and if Rey has been out of bed waiting for Ben, she’s firmly ensconced when he enters.

She doesn’t even wait for him to reach the bed before she starts talking—barely even waits for the door to close behind him.

“What was that?” she asks.

He focuses on crossing to her, his mind a blank, yawning void, devoid of any possible answers. “What do you mean?”

“Seriously? It wasn’t even ten minutes ago—you…I don’t know what you were doing. But it was you, I was sure of it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s like you lit up. Like a firework at a festival, blazing across the night sky. All your energy flared like that, and I could feel it from here.”

Kriff. He knows exactly what she’s talking about.

“I was…trying something. It’s not important.”

But as soon as he gets close, her hand is on his, tugging him down onto the bed, and he intended to resist her—he really did, but he’s no good at it. No good at all. And then she’s pressing herself up against him, and he can barely think. Her hands fan his face, like she’s searching for answers there.

“It felt like—” She bites her lip, runs a thumb across his. “It felt like the energy I used to heal you.”

He swallows. He can’t answer. Shame swells within him, an icy wave to wash up against the dizzying heat of his arousal. What will she think of him? She must think him pathetic; base; craven. She must—

“Hey, stop.” She pushes herself into him even further. “You don’t have to keep pushing me away.” She must mean it metaphorically, because he surely isn’t doing it to her physically. “You know I want you.”

“Rey—”

“Whatever you want,” she whispers. 

He keeps himself still, and the shame and guilt rise into his throat like bile. “I just want to hold you.”

And then he feels the answering wave from her—her own shame. She shifts away.

“I’m sorry. I thought it meant that you…but nevermind. It doesn’t matter if you’re not interested in me like that.”

“No, Rey, you know it’s not that. You don’t know—” He can’t put it into words. How can he verbalize the way she makes him feel? Like he is a powder keg ready to burn up at any moment? She likened him to a firework, but fireworks are things of grace and beauty. He isn’t gunpowder used for any such purpose—he is brute force, a weapon. Less controlled than he ought to be. And how can he soothe her, show her exactly how beautiful he finds her?

An image comes to mind. One he’d traced with his fingers earlier, learning the contours, letting his imagination run wild.

“There is one thing I’d like to do,” he murmurs, and her breath hitches. “Let me show you.”

* * *

He carries the sensation of her with him the next day, even as he makes his way back to the fortress. It’s time to make a show of presenting a report to Snoke, who seems uncaring that Kylo keeps returning to court with no news of Maz Kanata, let alone her scalp. Sometimes he’s punished, sometimes he isn’t—it all depends on whether Snoke has found another person to extract misery from when Kylo is there.

One of the messengers is waiting for him when he reaches the gates on Grimtaash. Kylo knows something is awry by then.

“You’re to go directly to the throne room, Lord Ren,” the man says. “The Emperor awaits you. He’s been waiting for your return most eagerly.”

Kylo makes sure Grimtaash is securely in the hands of the stable crew before striding off in the direction of the throne room. He’s curious; if Kylo were in real trouble, he’s sure Hux himself would have come out to deliver the message with all his usual glee. That is, unless Hux has finally reached the end of his usefulness, and Kylo is about to witness his downfall. He contemplates how sweet that would be—

—not as sweet as Rey last night, coating his fingers, and then when he grew braver, his tongue—

—and suppresses the urge to hum a tune on his way to Snoke.

A shrill cry rises up, echoing through the halls, and it gives Kylo some comfort that Snoke at least isn’t waiting to unleash his sadism onto him this time. At that thought, he can almost hear Rey’s voice in the back of his mind, rebuking him for being so callous, so quick to dismiss somebody else’s suffering just to spare his own.

He’s fairly sure the scream isn’t Hux anyway, which makes it that much less satisfying.

When he strolls through the doors into the vast hall, his enthusiasm dies entirely. Hux is still in his usual position next to the throne, his face still graced by a hideous smirk. More than that, he does appear to have something to smirk over.

At Snoke’s feet, a corpse lies, and it appears to be smoking, faint vapor rising from the charred skin.

Kylo stops several feet away, dropping to one knee and bending his head so he doesn’t have to look at it. He’s thankful the mask keeps the worst of the stench out of his nostrils.

“You requested my presence, my lord?”

“Ah, Ren. Excellent timing. We’ve just had a breakthrough on the project you’ve been pursuing all these months.”

Alarm creeps through Kylo like cold fingers across his skin. “My lord?”

“It hasn’t sat well with me that the incident in Jakku proved the continuing existence of a Resistance. I know you’ve been tirelessly pursuing Maz Kanata, but given the scant returns on your hard work, I’ve had others out there looking for signs too.”

Hux, of course. But Kylo feels a shift in the air around him…one of the Guard emerging from the shadows of the room. Vicrul. Always the quiet one. Stealthy. Almost as much brain as brawn.

“May I inquire about our guest?” Kylo asks, with a nod to the corpse.

“A useful informant,” Hux replies. “I’ve apparently had more luck with those than you have.”

Kylo suspects that’s only because the information has been tortured out of whoever it was.

“He outlived his usefulness,” Snoke continues. “Though not without leaving us one final piece of information.”

Vicrul steps up beside Kylo, unfurling his hand. In his glove, inside his palm, lies a ring. Heavy, golden—a signet ring, with a symbol etched into the front of it.

“What is this?” Kylo asks.

“It was carried by our friend here,” Hux replies, with a dismissive toe-touch of the corpse. “We believe it’s an old family crest, used to guarantee safe passage for members of the Resistance as they travel the kingdom.”

Kylo takes the ring. The front is a crest—one that strikes him as familiar, even if he can’t place it directly. But when he turns it over, he can see inside, to the surface that’s hidden when worn against the skin. It’s another emblem. Two twin suns, interlinked, their beams radiating across the back of the ring.

Luke Skywalker’s symbol. 

Kylo tastes bile as he recognizes it, and he has to swallow it before he speaks. “You think Skywalker still lives? There’s been no true sighting of him in years.”

“And yet, the Resistance continue to use him as their symbol. Until I see his corpse lying at my feet, I’ll assume he’s alive and capable of stirring up trouble. Or worse...hope.”

Kylo can’t think what possible reason his uncle would stir hope in anybody. He tries to calm his thundering heart. “Did the crest belong to this man’s family?”

“We’re not sure,” says Hux. “We do know that the ring belongs to a Coruscanti family of old.” 

He’s right—despite the other elements on the symbol, it sits on a backdrop of the lilies used to represent all the houses of Coruscant. And, with a heavy swallow, Kylo remembers where he knows the crest from. The rearing horse, up on its back legs, is a giveaway: the Tekkas.

Not that he will tell anybody here that.

“Was our guest from Coruscant, then?” he asks instead. Surely not. Surely—he peers back, as if he could recognize the remains of the man by clothes alone. But no—he’s too plump to be Lor San.

“No. Vicrul found him in Ithor.” Snoke watches Kylo carefully. “Weren’t you there only a few weeks ago?”

“I was, my lord. I wonder if I spooked them into becoming careless.”

“It’s certainly possible.”

“And you don’t recognize the crest?”

Kylo pretends to study it even closer. “Not at the moment. Do you not, my lord? Or Hux?”

It’s a veiled insult to both of them—Hux was never a noble, even if he wanted to be, and certainly has no knowledge of old Coruscanti families. It triggers a scowl from him, as intended. Meanwhile, Snoke is less reactive, though clearly rankled by the reminder that after all of his study of the kingdom he still has gaps in his knowledge.

“Never matter,” says Snoke. “Luckily, we have a resource right at our fingertips. We can refer to for information about this crest.”

The library—in there are guides to all the old family crests. “Of course, my lord. I can go look immediately.”

“Good. And take Vicrul with you.”

Kylo pauses in the process of rising back to his feet. “Vicrul?”

“Is there a problem?” Snoke’s tone is so benign as he asks, as if he isn’t waiting for Kylo to say something that will give him an excuse to punish him. But Kylo hears the implicit threat underneath.

He bows his head. “Not at all. I just don’t see how this task will take two of us to complete.”

Snoke spreads his spindly fingers across the arms of the throne. “There are a great many houses to refer to. I want this done quickly. Unless of course, you have a reason not to take somebody into the castle with you?”

“What possible reason could I have for that, my lord? The castle is a ruin.”

He feels it now, the first prods of Snoke around his mind, those bony fingers trying to find a way in. Subtly, trying to find a crack in Kylo’s shield to slip through. Snoke is suspicious about something, and Kylo fights the clawing panic that threatens to rise inside him. What does he know—or suspect? Why does he really want an insider in the castle? “I was thinking more of what the castle contains.”

He breathes through the panic, focusing on calming things: the cat chasing its own tail. The quiet of a sunrise with nobody around to belittle him, his mask off and sun on his face. Rey’s soothing aura, like a balm for his soul.

Only when he’s mastered himself, turning his mind blank, does he respond.

“It contains nothing. Except for the library.”

Snoke grins, an ugly slash across his scarred face. “And perhaps, in that library, is the name of a family you do not wish to betray. A family whose crest is on that ring.”

He’s right, of course. But also missing so much more. And because Kylo has been focusing on the bigger lie, it makes the smaller one so much easier to say.

“I have no loyalty to anyone except for you, my lord.” He’s impressed with how smooth he sounds even to his own ears. Perhaps on the verge of boredom. “You have ensured that.”

“I would like to think so.” Snoke narrows his eyes, suspicion not completely averted. “But I also believed the Resistance all but gone and instead—there is this. So humor me. Take Vicrul with you to the library and find that name. That’s an order.”

And there it is. Kylo has no way around it now.

“Of course, my lord. We can discuss a suitable time—”

“Now, Ren.”

His heart is thundering, but he can’t do anything except nod and allow Vicrul to follow him from the room. His mind races in search of an excuse, a delaying tactic, but he can’t find one, and he’s sure that any obstacles he tries to throw up will only raise Snoke’s suspicion further. 

But Rey is in the castle. Rey is likely in the library, and if she is, she’s very unlikely to be armed. As soon as Vicrul lays eyes on her, it’s all over for both of them.

There’s nothing he can do. Snoke’s order has set terrible things in motion. Not only will Vicrul have evidence of Kylo’s betrayal—which will be Rey’s death warrant, if Vicrul doesn’t kill her on sight—but as soon as he finds the name belonging to that family crest, the Tekkas will lose everything. 

Two problems tied up into one gnarled knot, and Kylo has no idea how to undo it.

Kylo leads Vicrul through the fortress and out towards the horses. Snoke is unaware of the portal within the fortress itself, the one close to Kylo’s quarters. It had been included by the family hired to extend the original guard house on that site, at the base of the castle hill, into what eventually became Snoke’s court. They kept the old wall, and kept their secret when they did so, paying with their lives when Snoke decided he didn’t want anybody to have the plans of his court alive.

But Snoke knows of the portals and the passages. He’s been through them, with Kylo as his guide. He knows of an entrance on the hillside, out in the woods where Kylo once chased Rey.

Vicrul goes for his mount, but Kylo stops him before they reach the stables.

“We’re better proceeding on foot,” he explains. Vicrul has never used the portals; hasn’t been to the castle since it was raided and then blocked up.

They make their way through the gates, and then immediately veer off the road into the trees, Vicrul silently following Kylo. He’s never been a talkative man, but Kylo doesn’t like his silence now, nor does he appreciate having the man at his back. He’s never been as impulsive as some of the Guard, but his silence is unnerving even if Kylo has no great desire to converse with him.

He needs to use the silence. He needs to think.

He still hasn’t shown Rey how to shield herself properly, so when they step foot in the castle, Vicrul will sense her immediately. She needs to be tucked away somewhere that hides her presence—and there are very few places that meet that requirement. All of them in the library, precisely where they are heading. Yet how can Kylo even warn Rey that she needs to hide?

She’s shown him. The times she’s called out to him with her mind, she’s shown him—and he’s failed to respond to her. He doesn’t know how to do it.

The woods that line the hillside are covered in boulders and crevices. Kylo takes Vicrul to one particular crack in the rock, a fissure which barely looks wide enough to fit a man inside. But it’s part of the illusion—Kylo slides his way through the stone, and once inside, the space opens out into a real cave. He casts a light so Vicrul can see where they are.

It’s not a large cave by any means—Kylo can reach out with both arms and touch the walls—but it’s broad enough to fit them both in once the portal is open. He wastes no time doing so, aware that once they step into the passages, time is running out for Rey.

Perhaps he should just kill Vicrul here, and leave him to rot inside the—

No. He’s almost pushed to his knees by the wave of pain at the mere idea of disobeying his orders. He can’t. Snoke knew what he was doing—Kylo has to take Vicrul into the castle, to the library, or suffer.

Miserable, he closes the portal behind them, and they set off through the tunnels.

He doesn’t have long, even if he takes the most circuitous route into the castle. He needs to warn Rey, which means he needs to teach himself a complicated piece of magic without alerting Vicrul of what he’s doing, and without being able to consult the library on how to do so.

So what does he know?

It’s spirit magic. Which means—which means he needs to reach out to Rey with his mind, with his soul. He needs to bridge a connection, like they’ve done with physical contact, but do it over a distance. So how does he do that?

He needs to focus on Rey. He knows what her spirit feels like—what her soul is like. He’s trying to reach out for that with his own, isn’t he? So he tries to shove his panic down, clear his mind—his heart—of anything except thoughts of Rey, of how she feels, of how she resonates when he is close to her. Brightness, like sunshine, and bottled joy. Her energy becomes stronger when they’re intimate, and he hopes this will help make a connection to her. He thinks—

He thinks of her last night. Of learning the shape of her with his fingers, of her shuddering and crying out against him. Of how warm she’d been, and slick, and how she’d gripped his fingers tightly when he slid them inside her. Of the way she’d arched her back and rocked her hips against his mouth when he’d grown brave enough to ask to do that too. 

He thinks of the sounds she’d made, of the breathy way she’d said his name, the way she’d pleaded and said  _ yes, yes, yes _ . Of how her thighs had tightened around his face, and she’d tried to muffle the sounds she made against her hand, and she’d curled her fingers into his hair to urge him on. 

He thinks of the way her hand had felt against his bare skin when she’d been healing him, pouring the energy they created between them into him until he felt dizzy with desire for her.

He thinks of how the air had shimmered around them, like dawn on the horizon, when she’d fallen apart on his tongue, and it had been like drowning in a blanket of Rey.

He takes all of that and he reaches out, chasing the feeling, calling out for her.

_ Kylo? _ She sounds confused.

_ Yes. _ Relief swells through him.  _ You’re in danger. I am bringing somebody into the castle and we’ll be there soon. You must hide, somewhere that your presence can’t be felt. _

He feels her panic and confusion, then determination.  _ I will. _

He breaks the connection, momentarily overwhelmed by a way of dizziness. It took more effort than it should have done. He wants to stay with her until he reaches the castle, to be sure she’s hidden before he brings Vicrul out, but he can’t sustain it.

And he realizes he has to be careful of where he exits into the castle. If he takes them out into the courtyard, or the kitchens, it will be very apparent somebody is living in the castle. Instead, he leads Vicrul to a portal into the dungeons, far too close to Anakin’s influence for his liking.

“Come on,” he tells Vicrul as they pass through the dungeons. “Let’s get this over with.”

With one problem averted—he hopes—he still faces another. What can he do to protect the Tekkas? Lor San annoys him greatly, and even Dasha has her moments, but this is no way to repay them for the help they’ve provided. Even if they are in the Resistance, rather than simply being the sympathizers he’d suspected them to be.

They come up the stairs from the dungeons into the mess hall, which looks suitably abandoned and gloomy, and Kylo immediately leads Vicrul up more stairs towards the library, not giving him time to peer out into the courtyard. He stomps as he moves, hoping the noise will give Rey plenty of warning if she isn’t already in her shelter.

“What’s that?” the man mutters, and Kylo follows his pointing finger. At the top of the stairs, a handful of feathers lie on the floorboards. No doubt left there by the cat.

Kylo shrugs. “Left by rats, I should imagine. The castle has become quite the haven for them.”

Then he makes a big show of opening the library door with the key, his heart pounding as he shoves the door open.

All inside is quiet and still. Empty. There aren’t even any crumbs on the bureau, nor books, the chair tucked neatly underneath it.

Vicrul takes a tentative step inside. “It’s not as dusty as I expected.”

“Part of the magical protection.”

Vicrul strides down the central aisle towards the bureau, not even glancing at the books he’s passing by. “Fetch the rolls,” he orders Kylo, tugging the chair out to park himself in it.

“I wasn’t aware you’d been promoted above me,” Kylo barks back. “Don’t get comfortable—it will take both of us to carry all the lists to the table.”

Vicrul makes no move to get back up. “Snoke suggested a division of labor—I check the books, you bring them to me.”

Snoke made no mention of this to Kylo, but instead of arguing, Kylo sees the advantage. If Kylo was truly trying to complete this task on his own, he’d take several shortcuts—summoning the books with the rolls of noble and ancient houses to the bureau, then using magic to search for the symbol within them. It would take a matter of minutes. But Vicrul doesn’t have the skill or the brainpower to think of ways to make their task easier, and Kylo isn’t going to correct him.

Instead, he stomps away with more force than is necessary, gladly sheltering out of sight while he selects the volumes containing the roles. They’re not in any order as sensible as alphabetical, since they’ve been chaotically updated over the years, which gives Kylo one slim opening—one hope to protect the Tekkas.

He takes the volume their name is in—the Coruscanti houses—and shoves it behind a row of almanacs, then floats the rest back towards Vicrul.

The man takes the top book from the pile, and carefully sets the ring on the desk next to it. “This is going to take forever.”

“Perhaps.” There’s no other chair for Kylo to take, so he tries to lean against the wall as casually as he can manage, leaving through one of the books himself. All the while, all his senses strain for any hint of Rey. Is she behind this very wall, trying not to make a sound? 

But he can only focus on one problem at once. He needs Vicrul out of here as soon as possible. The quicker the man is gone, the less chance there is of him discovering Rey’s presence. And yet, if he wants Vicrul out of the castle, he needs to provide an answer to the question he’s been sent here for. 

He wracks his brains for the names of other families—anybody who isn’t the Tekkas—as he flicks through the pages. None of the names make sense until—yes, they’ll do. He concentrates on the energy matter of the page, rearranging tiny particles of ink that have long since been wedded to the parchment, until they match the crest on the ring.

That’ll do.

“Here,” he says, slamming the book down in front of Vicrul. “There’s your crest.”

It’s hard to tell behind the mask, but Kylo is certain Vicrul is squinting at the page, glancing between the ring and the drawing until he nods in satisfaction.

“The Netals. I thought they were all dead.”

“It was never confirmed. They fled their property in Coruscant and returned to their estate in Chaaktil. They were horse merchants—it was where they made all their money.”

“Ah. I remember burning their stables down!” Vicrul says brightly. “The crest makes sense now.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

Vicrul pockets the ring and follows Kylo out of the library, while Kylo makes a big show of locking it up. He hopes that will signal to Rey that she’s free to come out. Then he leads Vicrul down stairs, and hopefully out of the castle forever.

“Hold on,” Vicrul calls at the foot of the stairs. “I have to take a leak.”

“You can do it in the dungeons.”

“Here will do.”

And before Kylo can stop him, he’s stepping through the ruined doors, out into the courtyard. Kylo’s already going for his sword as he waits for Vicrul’s reaction—the confusion, at what he’s seeing.

“Have you been gardening?” he asks in disbelief, then “—no. The girl.”

Not as stupid as Kylo usually believes. “What girl?”

“You know what girl,” he replies, and his scythe is in his hand, meeting Kylo’s blade in a ringing clash of metal. “This—life. This isn’t you.”

It starts raining, as they exchange blows, their weapons well matched. But Kylo isn’t afraid—he knows he can beat Vicrul. He can defeat any single one of the Guard—he’s done it before, and he’ll do it again.

That is, until he trips over empty air, falling hard, his blade clattering from his hand and then pushed out of his reach.

“This isn’t a duel,” Vicrul tells him, and Kylo knows it was a dirty trick. “I don’t have to play by the rules.”

Kylo’s still faster than him, able to stay out of reach, and calls the sword back to him to block the next downward arc from the scythe. “Then neither do I.” And he kicks upwards, hard, between Vicrul’s legs.

It brings the other man to his knees, and Kylo’s able to push himself up, away, on the other side of the well.

But he can feel Vicrul reaching out, searching. Trying to locate Rey. And Rey, for all her training, isn’t used to blocking people like this. Kylo can feel her—she must have just crawled out of her nook, stripping her protection away. He tries to scream at her, mentally, to go back into it, to hide where Vicrul will never find her. But he can’t—he can’t concentrate like this, and she’s coming closer. She’s unarmed—she must be, they weren’t going to spar today—and all he can do is shove himself in the direction of the doors to block her from coming through them.

Vicrul gets there first.

Kylo does the only thing he can do and launches himself at the man’s back, punching him between the shoulder blades. It takes them both over, and Kylo thinks he has Vicrul pinned, but the warrior bucks and heaves beneath him. 

Kylo is knocked off to the side, but before Vicrul can rise, Kylo punches him again, in the kidneys this time. And then he employs an even dirtier tactic—he grabs for Vicrul’s helmet and wrenches it from his head.

The mask is heavy, and Kylo tosses it over to Rey as Vicrul starts screaming, a low wail that builds and builds and builds. Rey stares down at what she’s clasping, then up at the warrior with wide, horrified eyes.

And for the first time, Kylo sees the face of one of his men.

Far from the grizzled old fighter Kylo has expected, Vicrul is young. Perhaps younger than he is. His skin is pale, at least beneath the sweat and the pink bloom of pain on his cheeks, his hair wispy and the silvery-white of Uyterian folk. Spittle froths around his howling mouth.

“Destroy the helmet,” Kylo commands Rey.

“What?” She blinks, tearing her gaze away from Vicrul’s grimace. “ _ No! _ ”

Vicrul begins to writhe, and instead she ignores Kylo’s order, stepping closer to Vicrul. 

“Rey—”

“We can’t leave him like this,” she insists, and as if drawn by her voice—though more likely his mask—Vicrul wriggles closer. But he still clenches his scythe in his fist, like a corpse which has seized up around an object it clutched at when it died.

When Kylo says her name again, it’s a warning. “Rey!”

She sees the scythe being lifted, and drops the mask towards Vicrul as she leaps backwards, but it’s too late. Vicrul has managed to cut a crimson line across her abdomen.

She screams, and Kylo sees red. He takes Vicrul’s head in his hands, and he twists until the neck snaps, then he keeps going.

Rey falls to her knees, hand clutched to her belly, and Kylo shoves Vicrul’s twitching corpse away.

“I’m okay,” she tells him behind a mouth drawn tight with pain.

“Let me see,” he demands.

She pulls her hand away. There is so much blood—he’s not sure, the wave of red that hits him next. Is it anger? But though she is bleeding, and fiercely, her fingers coated already, the wound itself isn’t deep. Not deep enough to be mortal.

“You need bacta to stop infection. And stitches. I can—”

She’s nodding, and then he’s carrying her, up the stairs to her chamber. Cradled in his arms for once, rather than tossed over his shoulder. She complains about the blood trail she is leaving on the carpets—like they aren’t already ruined from time and neglect—and then she refuses to lie down on the bed, insisting on being taken into the refresher instead, where she won’t stain anything.

He lays her out, while she is white with the pain, and he finds himself fetching the supplies, stripping his gloves away to tend to her skin while she lets him, never muttering a word of complaint. She bites down on one of his gloves when he instructs, letting him stitch the wound closed, and he wishes more than ever that he was graceful, or gentle, or any of the things she deserves right now. Mostly, he can’t process what’s happening and he finds his hands working of their own volition, because Rey’s pain beats at his shoulders until the soothing edge of bacta kicks in and color returns to her cheeks.

“You should rest,” he tells her when it’s over. “I’ll bring you food, but you won’t be able to train for a while. No sparring, no magic work—not until you’re healed.”

“I understand,” she whispers. He doubts she wants to do either thing at the moment—the bacta is good, but it can’t work miracles.

“I have to go. I need to return Vicrul’s body back to Snoke.”

“Why was he even here?”

He quickly recounts Snoke’s mission, remaining by her side until he can convince himself with his own eyes that she will live. She interrupts him only once—when he mentions Luke’s emblem on the inside of the ring.

“Luke Skywalker?” she asks, rousing a little. “I thought he was a myth.”

“No. He’s real. He was my—he’s real. If he’s even alive anymore. But the Resistance use him as their figurehead.” Then he continues to tell her all that’s happened today.

“Why did Snoke send Vicrul with you?” she asks when he’s done. “Why couldn’t he come alone?”

“Because it’s my blood alone that can open the portals. Not even Snoke can get through without me. And when he blocked the castle up, ordering the doors and windows to be filled in with stone, the same magic that controls the portals extended to every potential entrance. They can’t be moved with might or magic—except by me.”

She frowns. “You don’t use blood to get around.”

He shakes his head. “It’s—metaphorical. Only me or mine. My family, if I had one.”

“Oh.” For a moment, she looks like she might cry. “Then there really is no way out of here without you letting me go, is there?”

The question hits him in the same place where Vicrul just left a bruise. “Don’t worry. It won’t be long now.” And for the first time in years, he feels ready to cry himself. 

“What will you tell Snoke?” 

“That he attacked me because he was still angry at Trudgen’s death. That he thought if he attacked me while my back was turned, he might have the upper hand. He was stupid enough that this lie could seem realistic.”

“I hope Snoke isn’t too mad.”

“What does that matter?” He rises, leaving her to wash herself clean, so she will be happy enough to get into the bed. “I’ll be back tomorrow. But if I’m not—”

“It’s not on purpose.”

Truthfully, he doesn’t fear Snoke’s reaction that much. His own life will never be forfeit, and that’s what calms him as he slings Vicrul’s body over his back, trudging back into the dungeons to face his master.

* * *

“What. Happened?”

Even though Kylo has no reason to fear for his life, it doesn’t make Snoke’s cold, hungry fury any easier to bear when he slings Vicrul’s body down on the throne room floor.

“He attacked me, my lord.” Kylo takes a knee beside the body and fishes in a pocket for the ring. He’s made some subtle changes on the journey, before stashing it back where it had been—the sigil now resembles the Nezal family crest in truth. “But I have the answer you seek.”

“Why would he do such a thing, when he was under orders from me?”

“My lord—your orders didn’t state that we shouldn’t kill each other. And so it seems Vicrul intended to use that loophole.”

He holds the ring out for Snoke, but finds that Snoke’s attention is diverted. His master isn’t looking at him anymore, he’s staring over his shoulder. When Kylo follows his gaze, he sees the telltale, guilty shifting of the remaining Guard.

It seems perhaps they had been plotting to kill him after all.

But more than that. Hux has gone very still, very pale. He isn’t watching the proceedings with the glee he should. And Kylo’s attention on the weasel draws Snoke’s too.

“I see,” the emperor rasps. “I see.”

Hux visibly blanches—no mean feat for somebody already the color of spoiled milk.

“The crest belongs to the Nezal family, my lord,” Kylo tells him coolly. But it’s the coolness borne of heat that has burned through everything available to it, and left only ice behind. His fury has done just that. Rey is—Rey is injured, and nothing matters more than that. None of these petty games. He shouldn’t be here, on bended knee. He should be with her, tending to her. “Horse merchants who owned a great manor in Coruscant. I’m sure their crest can be found above their mantel.”

“Good work, my young apprentice,” Snoke says. “You may take your leave.” 

Kylo rises, dropping the ring into Snoke’s waiting palm, and departs without a backward glance. He should be taking delight in Hux’s schemes being uncovered—but he doesn’t have the energy to care about Hux. He just wants to get home to Rey.

* * *

Rey’s sleeping when he returns; the castle feels peaceful, and he knows his own tense, nervous energy is spilling out, disturbing that peace. Dusk has only just fallen, but he barely takes the time to shuck his armor, to drop the mask outside her door and see her.

She’s peaceful, but pale, her freckles standing out against her skin in a way they don’t usually. She’s so still that at first he panics, choking on it, until he feels the thready pulse of her energy. Nowhere near as vibrant as it usually is, or should be.

He takes the time to wrap her blindfold around her eyes before he wakes her, since she fell asleep before covering her eyes. He can hardly take care of her if he’s in pain himself.She’s under the blankets, and the cat is curled up beside her, yellow eyes blinking at Kylo’s approach like he’s been waiting for his return. Only when Kylo sits down on the bed does BB-8 rise, stretch, and jump down to the floor, brushing against Kylo’s legs then disappearing through the open door before it swings shut.

Kylo’s presence doesn’t wake Rey, and suddenly he fears that she’s injured worse than he expected. Or what if—what if her wound gets infected? 

He peels the blankets away from her slowly. Her midriff is bare to him; she’d come to bed only in her breast band and leggings. Maybe the sight of so much skin should stir something in him, but mostly he just finds her hips a sharp reminder of all the neglect she has faced in her life. So many people who should have taken better care of her and failed to; he’s one among many, and he’s no different to the rest.

Her wound remains hidden under the cloth she pressed against it, and that he tries to peel away too—this makes her squirm and whine. It has become fused to her skin with blood and bacta. But he manages to get it away without disturbing the wound.

“Ben,” she murmurs, attempting a smile. “It looks worse than it is.”

He’s not sure he agrees. It looks raw and angry, even with the neatness of the stitches he’d added earlier. What if it does take hold of her blood? What if the wound takes months to heal and leaves her unable to handle a weapon? It’s her abdomen, if the muscle is damaged it could cause her problems lifting and moving; she could be left vulnerable, despite everything. And it’s all his fault.

He hovers a shaking hand above the wound. How did she do it, before? Heal him? The spirit magic she wields—how does she use it so effortlessly? 

“Ben,” she repeats. “Don’t worry. Just hold me.”

But he can’t. He can’t stop imagining poison setting root, spreading throughout her body, festering, rotting her from the inside. Her blood turning black, her withering away while he’s powerless to stop it. Now he understands his grandfather far better than he ever thought he could—he too would turn to madness and destruction if he had to let Rey wither in his arms.

She’s too pale, in all ways. He wants her true spirit back, the star in his moonless sky. And that’s the vision he latches onto, the way she feels to him even as faint as it is now. He tries to breathe life into it, like he would throw kindling on a dying fire, so it will burn hotter and brighter. 

Perhaps it’s his imagination, but he thinks her cheeks are more flushed. But is that because he’s having an effect on her? Or is she starting with a fever?

He concentrates then on her body—on where the perfection of her skin is marred. He tries to mirror what she did to him only a few nights before, tracing the edge of the wound with his mind, pulling the pieces back together. It’s like—it’s like putting shattered glass back together, only the pieces are infinitely more precious to him. This is Rey, and he focuses on making her whole.

She shifts beneath his hand, and he’s sure it prickles with discomfort. But even in the poor light, he can see that whatever he’s doing is working. He tugs at the end of the stitching thread and begins to pull it loose, so it doesn’t get swallowed as her healed skin closes up.

He should be tired by now. So much energy poured into her, but it’s worth it; her energy burns brighter than ever. And she’s still moving, hips shifting, pressing up towards his hand now. Only when she presses her thighs together, whimpering—but not in pain—does he realize the effect he’s having on her. It’s an answering chord to the way he’d felt when she’d poured so much energy into him to heal his skin, her body taking the excess and turning it into pleasure.

“Not much longer,” he tells her, and he’s not sure what he means by that. He’s nearly finished healing the wound, but is it a promise? What is he offering her when she is healed? 

He knows what he wants. He thinks he knows what she wants. But he promised—he promised himself, if nobody else.

“I’ve been frantic all afternoon,” he says as the wound becomes a faint line. “Ever since it happened—I’ve just wanted to be here with you, and I couldn’t be.”

“You’re here now,” she tells him sweetly. “That’s all that matters.”

“It’s not,” he says fervently. “I don’t think you understand how much you mean to me. I know I’ve told you that I love you, but sometimes—I don’t think you believe me. Or you can’t really comprehend how deep the feeling goes, because I can’t put it into words. I can’t show you, not really, even when I touch you.”

His hand is on her skin now, and her skin is warm but not feverish, and there’s a silvery scar where this afternoon she’d bled in his arms. Her chest rises and falls beneath the breast band, and it does stir something in him—because she’s feeling exactly how he felt when she healed him. Like a freshly lit match, nerves blazing, body taut and eager. But also drunk on the pleasure of it, like he’s been caught in a cycle of release and afterglow for hours.

“I wish I could make you understand, but if all I really have are words, then words are what I’ll give you.”

He smoothes out the last pucker of her skin until it is pink and shiny. Rey takes his free hand, and she guides it beneath the waistband of her leggings, where she is slick and hot and petal-soft. He’s reached the limit of what he can heal in her, but he still wants to make her feel better—and this is how he can do that. This is what she wants.

“I can’t promise to protect you,” he says to her. “I’ve already failed at that. I can’t even promise to always be there for you—that’s outside of my control too, no matter how much I hate it. But I can promise you that I will always love you, you and no other. I’m never going to share my body with another person like this. I’ll never share vows with another person.”

She gasps, and he’s not sure if it’s his words, or the way his fingers are moving over her. But she tugs him down, so their mouths are level.

“If you’re going to make vows, then so am I. Even with no witnesses, the stars themselves can be them if they want to be. I will protect you. I will always be there for you. And I will always love you, even if you don’t believe me either. I won’t exchange vows with another person, and I have no intention of ever letting anybody else touch me like this—nor touch you. You’re mine, Ben.”

Somewhere along the way, he started crying. He’s not sure how to fit all the competing emotions inside him—the arousal, the still-ebbing terror, the love, the shock of it all. The tears are for all of it, but most of all because he understands the significance of what they’ve just done. Sharing vows like that—it’s tantamount to marriage. He’s sure the ghosts of the castle see it that way.

“Rey, are you sure—”

“Ssssh. It was my idea, remember?” She’s trying to tug off his tunic, and he’s not exactly inclined to stop her. “And what’s a wedding ceremony without the consummation?”

He should argue more. He should hold himself to the vows he made to himself. But he’s weak, and she’s warm and willing, and when she pulls him down for a kiss, he offers her no resistance at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy ~~cliffhanger~~ Christmas, if you celebrate. Whether you do or not, I hope you stay safe over the next few weeks, and find a little light to guide you through this darkest part of the year. 
> 
> I'll be over on [Tumblr](https://stellardarlings.tumblr.com/) and now also [Twitter](https://twitter.com/stellardarlings), and I'll be sprinkling a few extra teasers between now and the next chapter. I'm sure you'll want to see them!


	20. Chapter Nineteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’ve never lain like this, with Ben cradled between Rey’s legs, his torso covering hers. He’s careful to rest on his arms, rather than rest on her, but even still they’re closer than they’ve ever been, pressed skin to skin.
> 
> Rey is flying, her blood soaring. Today has lurched from emotion to emotion, from one shock to the other, but none of that matters now. Ben is her husband, at least by exchange of vows, and she is his wife.
> 
> She’s not sure who is more eager to be unclothed, though she surely had the head start, given how little she was wearing when she came to bed. Ben has the advantage over her though—he can see her body as he unravels her breast band and peels her leggings down her thighs. She can only learn him with her hands and soul.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year everyone! Let's get 2021 started with a bang. Pun absolutely intended. It's only taken 150,000 words to get there.
> 
> For those of you who've clocked that "Enthusiastic consent under dubious circumstances" tag, this is where it really kicks in, although by now you've probably got a sense of where the story is going and why the consent is dubious.

They’ve never lain like this, with Ben cradled between Rey’s legs, his torso covering hers. He’s careful to rest on his arms, rather than rest on her, but even still they’re closer than they’ve ever been, pressed skin to skin.

Rey is flying, her blood soaring. Today has lurched from emotion to emotion, from one shock to the other, but none of that matters now. Ben is her husband, at least by exchange of vows, and she is his wife.

She’s not sure who is more eager to be unclothed, though she surely had the head start, given how little she was wearing when she came to bed. Ben has the advantage over her though—he can see her body as he unravels her breast band and peels her leggings down her thighs. She can only learn him with her hands and soul.

“I’ve never done this before,” he tells her, suddenly, like he’s ashamed of it. He shifts away, sitting back up to roll the fabric down her calves and off her ankles, and she follows him. The air is cold without him covering her, despite the pipes heating the room. There’s a different kind of heat between them, a charge which she can’t determine as either magic or just something that happens in moments like this, and she wants his skin against hers again. She never wants anything against her skin except his.

“Neither have I.” She runs a hand down his broad chest—cataloging in her mind the sparse hair, the sheen of sweat. She’ll never get used to how large he is—how much it takes for her to wrap her arms around him. Yet he’s being so gentle—trying to fold himself in ways that make him seem smaller, even though that’s impossible. With one hand on his back, she can feel the curve of his shoulders, how he’s leaning into her, trying to match her height as he meets her for a kiss. “I’m still taking the silphium.”

She’s never seriously considered having children before Ben, but she knows that no matter what their future together holds, it can’t be that. Not while they’re both prisoners—not while Snoke still ravages the land. Especially not when their child would probably inherit her and Ben’s magical abilities, making them ideal targets for Snoke.

“Good. That’s—” Whatever else Ben intended to say is swallowed in his gasp as her hand finally completes its descent, down his abdomen and to the space between his legs. He can’t seem to do anything but pant against her mouth. She can feel his energy cresting, like it did when he was up in the tower room touching himself, but it’s so much more vibrant this close. 

All she wants is for him to let go. 

He covers her hand with his own, and for a moment, she thinks he’s about to pull her away. Instead he lets her find his waistband, slipping her hand underneath. He’s touched her everywhere—he’s left her only in her undergarments—so it seems only fair. And when she curls a fist around him, instead of pushing her away, he covers her wrist instead, as if to hold her in place.

“Rey, I…” He grunts, and she has no idea if she’s doing this the right way or not. She doesn’t have her eyes to guide her, only the sounds he makes and the spikes in his energy. When she grips more firmly, shifts her hand, it’s like a firework show behind her eyes. He makes a garbled, wordless sound, his hips rutting up towards her, and then sticky, viscous fluid is coating her fingers.

He’s panting even harder now, muttering under his breath. “Sorry, sorry, sorry…”

She silences his litany of apologies with the fingers of her clean hand, then with her mouth. He can barely even respond to her, lazily mirroring her tongue and lips, and she’s never felt him so relaxed. So free.

He wipes her hand clean with something, then proceeds to lay her back onto the blankets, lying alongside her rather than above her. She doesn’t like it, trying to pull him closer, but it seems he has other ideas. He charts a path down her body with his mouth, beginning with her earlobes and a spot on her neck that she never knew about until his clever tongue and teeth start working in tandem against it. She feels—she feels empty. And it’s hardly like she knows what it’s like to be filled—he’s barely touched her there before—but her body seems to know what it wants.

“Ben,” she whimpers, and he shushes her.

“I might not know much,” he tells her, “but I know you need to be prepared, so I don’t hurt you.”

She writhes, and he places a gentle hand on her hips, pushing her back down. There’s so much strength in him—she can feel it in the curve of his arm as she clings to it—but he’s so careful with her. “No, I’m ready, I’m ready, I don’t need—”

“You do,” he says firmly, turning the attention of his mouth to her collarbone. “And I need—I need time to recover.” He sounds a little defeated, a little ashamed, and she doesn’t understand why. Doesn’t he know how powerful it felt to have him come apart in her hand like that? That after all this time spent denying himself any part of the energy between them, that he’d surrendered to it? Doesn’t he know that she’d felt his release echo within her and it had only fed her own hunger?

But she can’t put any of that into words to explain it to him. Not when his mouth moves lower—though not low enough. Covering her breast, like he did the time she healed him, but this time with nothing between them.

She’s rubbing her legs together, pushing back against the hand holding her down, searching for some kind of friction. But she’s too slick, too eager for the motion to provide any real relief. Only when his hand moves, those large fingers first curling around her thigh, and then delving onto her wet skin, does she get even a fraction of the respite she’s seeking.

He pulls his mouth away, slowly, with a lingering graze of teeth that makes her whine. “There?” And it must be obvious where she needs him, because she’s grinding against his hand, pushing against the gentle, slow circle he’s drawing with his thumb.

“Mmmm yes. More.”

She has to spread her legs to allow him to touch her properly, and though she wishes she could see him, she’s glad that the blindfold prevents her from seeing herself. It gives her a measure of boldness, in a way, removing the shyness she might have felt about being so unable to control her reactions. Instead all she can feel is his growing eagerness, the way his arousal spikes and spikes, and it only makes her want him more.

“So beautiful,” he murmurs, and then a finger breaches her, eased by how wet her body already is. It doesn’t hurt or ache, but her body resists him a little, still, so unused to the pressure. He’s careful, always so careful, his rhythm slow and precise even as she clenches around him, pushing herself down further. It’s good, if strange, but it’s not enough. Not even with the circles his thumb continues to make, or the way his mouth latches back to her breast. She’s overwhelmed despite that, his finger gliding in its rocking motion with the fresh surge of slickness she produces. 

“Ben. Please!”

“No.” He kisses just below her navel, lips lingering there for a moment. “It’s my right to love you properly. As you deserve.”

“You deserve to feel good too,” she whines. “I can make you feel so good—”

“All in good time.” Then she feels another finger easing in alongside the first, slow and smooth, like he’s gauging her reactions before he proceeds. 

Her head lolls back as she tries to process all of the sensations. This is a first, the use of more than one finger. It’s not exactly like she’d expected—so much pressure, though it’s not painful. One hand keeps pressing firmly down on her abdomen, keeping her hips still, as he takes the time to ease her. Now more than ever, she wants to be able to see his face. It doesn’t matter if she’d feel embarrassed about how her body reacts to him. She wants to see his reactions to this, she wants to see herself reflected in his eyes. She needs to know if he’s as raw and desperate as she feels—

Because he can’t be. Not with the control he’s displaying. No matter how tightly coiled he may be, it’s nothing compared to how wild she feels, and yet he’s too far away, lying alongside her like this. They should be connected, really connected, with nothing between them, two people fusing into one being. Their spirits—their souls—have connected so many times, and she wants to do that again, this time with their bodies interlocking, connected by the vows they’ve made to each other.

“Ben—”

His heat comes closer, his torso and all that warm, smooth skin tantalizingly close, as he bends to whisper in her ear. “Do you remember what it was like when I put my mouth on you?”

“Yes,” she tells him frantically, nodding. Of course she does—it was the single most exquisite experience of her life so far. Her body reacts to the memory too, of how that lovely, lush mouth had felt lapping and suckling at her. She’d read about it in the books, but lacked the courage to ask him to do that. He’d been eager though, and then when she’d heard the sounds he made, his moans like he was the one receiving pleasure—she’d never come apart so fast, not by her touch or his.

The memory of it causes her body to react again, coating his fingers like when his tongue had slicked across her. 

“That should be one of my vows to you,” he continues, and he twists his wrist just enough to wrench a cry from her. He stills, and she doesn’t know why he’s stopped—until her eager hips must convince him to continue. “To kiss you like that whenever you want me to. Or whenever I think you need it. But then I’d never do anything else—I’d never be anywhere but caught in the cradle of your legs.”

She thinks he intended to say more, but it’s all too much for her. His words—soft and reverent in tone, yet anything but in meaning—have only added to all the overwhelming sensations. By the end of his sentence she’s bucking, twisting, clenching—falling apart, fingers curling into the blankets as her body rocks and writhes against his hand.

He eases her down with sweet words, though she doesn’t really hear them. She’s in his arms, cradled against his chest, and with his fingers gone she’s so empty again. Achingly empty. It’s not like when she’s brought herself to relief, to help herself sleep or relax—he is still eager, pulsing hot and hungry beside her, and she needs more.

“There’s more you can do,” she says to him, breathless, when she’s capable of words again. “Between my legs. Husband.”

In response, he curls himself over her, but only to swallow her words, his tongue silencing hers. She wants to push him away and pull him closer at the same time, but it would be like trying to move the stones of the castle itself. And she’s tried that. So instead she snakes a hand between them, reaching between his legs like she did before.

He’s ready—more than ready. She has no idea what this part of him looks like either, and she can only imagine based on the drawings from all the books she’s read. He’s a true handful—more than her own hand, really—and the skin is unbearably soft, though he’s very solid and heavy against her palm. He hisses at her touch, at her questing fingers, though this time he doesn’t lose control quite as fast as he did before.

A pity.

But he’s not as naked as she is, and she pushes at his hips to get the offending material out of the way. He does move away from her then, but only to undress—she hears fabric hit the floor—and then he’s crawling beside her again, lying down to cover her. She spreads her legs to make room for him, unabashed because they will be face to face, and he will not be able to scrutinize her now. Even if he did spend so long with his face between her legs a few nights ago, and didn’t appear to have any complaints.

They’re back to where they were at the beginning of all this, only with absolutely nothing between them except for her blindfold. And that only stays on because it must. He is close enough that she can feel him breathing, and every breath she takes brushes her belly up against his. The scattering of hair on his torso brushes against her bare skin, against her breasts, a little rough and a delight all at once. He cages her between his arms, and once more she gets a sense of just how large he is—he shuts the world out, shielding her from anything other than him. She never wants to be anywhere else—she never wants her world to contain anything except for Ben.

“Will you tell me if I hurt you?” he asks.

“You won’t.”

“Please. I need to know.”

“Then. Yes.” She nips at where his chin ought to be above her, and his shaky breath fans out across her face. Then he fumbles—she wishes she could see enough to help him—and presses against her. Into her.

It’s more than his fingers, and there is a moment she is quite sure he won’t fit inside her at all. He is simply too much, even with all her eagerness, and she bites her lip as she tries to decide if this is going to work, if the blunt pressure of him is too uncomfortable to bear. He must read the indecision in her face—he begins to shift his hips away, and only the way she has him cradled between her own, the way she is able to hook a knee round his backside keeps him locked in place. It changes the angle, and he’s able to breach her, sinking inside.

They both make startled noises—hers is high-pitched, breathy, caught as much between pleasure and pain as she herself is. Ben’s note of bliss is far less ambiguous, but he holds himself perfectly still anyway.

“Are you okay? You look—“

She runs a soothing hand down his back. “It doesn’t hurt. I promise.”

And it doesn’t. It’s strange, this new sensation, this ache, and she has to stop herself from writhing to relieve herself of it, but it’s not truly painful. Mostly, she just wants him to move. She thinks that will change things, will make it better, somehow.

Instead he buries his face in her neck, as static as the castle bedrock. His hair, long as it is, tickles her skin where it touches. “I didn’t know anything could feel this good,” he mutters against her skin, and she knows, because it’s radiating out from him, how good he feels. It’s like his spirit is glowing, and they’re pressed so close—so entwined, practically one being like this—that it’s dripping down onto her, seeping into her through her skin.

She tangles her fingers in his hair and rolls her hips up towards him, which only generates a strangled noise from him and a few stuttery jerks of his hips. They drive him deeper into her, and while the pressure grows, the ache changes, subsiding and growing sweeter. She arches up again, trying to draw more of him in, and he obliges, sinking in—and in, and in.

She had no idea there was so much of him.

He lifts his head, clumsily kissing his way up the column of her throat, across her chin, and to her mouth, then rests his forehead against hers as he begins to move.

She isn’t sure what she’s expecting, but it’s not this. It’s like he’s rubbing against every nerve ending in her body—not just the ones he’s touching, but everywhere. Slow and careful as he is, the friction is like sparks inside her, like a match being dragged across stone, over and over. Her hands are on his back, fingertips running over the rough patchwork of scars, and the more insistent his hips becomes, the harder she clings to him. She’s sure she’ll leave bruises, but she’ll apologize for them later, if he even cares.

The way they’re cradled against each other, his hips caught between hers, means he’s grinding against her as he thrusts, right at the delicious spot his mouth had so cleverly lavished upon a few nights before. It’s too much, and every time it happens she clenches around him, like she’s trying to keep him locked tight where he is, even as her body gushes over him at the little sparks of pleasure. 

“Please,” she tells him, even though she’s not sure what she’s asking for. More, maybe? What more is there?

“You’re so small,” he says between gritted teeth. He’s still holding himself back. Does he think he’s going to hurt her? Does he think this isn’t the most exquisite experience of her life? Even the parts that ache and chafe are a pleasure, a joyous sign that Ben is within her.

“I’m not,” she insists. “It’s you; you’re enormous. And it’s good.”

She moves her hand, sliding down his back to cup his buttocks, shifting her legs to spread them wider, planting her feet flat on the bed. It gives her the leverage to buck up against him, pulling him into her with more force, and they make one of those simultaneous noises again, like a harmony.

She can grind against him like this, keeping him tight against her pelvis as he rocks within her, and it all swells quickly, sensitive and stimulated as she is, spilling from pleasure into blinding-white light, a moment outside the universe. Like stardust, the only thing keeping her anchored to life, to reality, is Ben himself, and the frantic way he now begins to move.

“That was—“ He buries his head again, and he loses some of that gentleness, finally, rocking into her with more force. “So tight.” And he gives a harsh thrust that makes her cry out. 

“There. Ben, right there.”

She didn’t think it was possible for this to get better, but it does, the steady, heavy rhythm of his hips. He’s close—she can feel his energy drawing in, condensing together, ready to explode outwards. She digs her fingers in tighter, trying to meet the power of his thrusts with her own, and when she can’t compete or keep up, she tries to direct him instead. There’s one place, deep inside, and he’s stroking over it, again and again. She’s tightening up, just like he is, only she’s doing it physically, tensing around him and arching beneath him. That makes him curse, makes him spit words in her ear that she’s never heard him say before, never thought a prince would even know.

And like this, with nothing between them, no barriers or space, even their minds open up. It’s like his soul is cradled around hers as much as his body is, warm and welcoming and so tender. Eager and delighted to cocoon hers, and she can only open herself wider in return at the sensation. She can’t read his mind, or see all of him, but everything that’s at the surface of his mind comes bubbling out.

Mostly it’s her name.  _ Rey, Rey, Rey, Rey _ . And underneath, wordless superlatives at how she feels to him. Below that, the way he feels about her, shining like a beacon, and she responds to its call, throwing away the protective wrapping she keeps around herself. Giving everything she has to him.

Which, right now, is just shining pleasure. It’s the friction between their bodies, and the way he finally crests, bursting into a cascade of sparks which shimmer over her and melt her last coherent thoughts away. Then she’s bucking underneath him, and she’s nothing—she’s just…light. Pure light, in his arms.

When sensation returns, it all returns. The ache, the sweat coating both of them, the stickiness between them. He’s kissing her again, mindless presses of his mouth against her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth, her chin. He withdraws from her, and she doesn’t like that at all—she’s instantly cold, even though he doesn’t move his body more than an inch from hers, and empty, throbbing around nothing.

He’s back to being so careful with her, lying pressed up beside her, on his elbow, as he brushes her hair gently back from her face. His fingers are shaking against her, she notices, and she doesn’t think it’s from the relative cold of the room.

“I love you,” he tells her earnestly, and there’s a hint of something in his voice. Sadness. Or regret. She can’t tell, and she doesn’t like it at all. 

She captures his face in one hand, determined not to let anything ruin this. “Don’t.”

“Rey, I said I wouldn’t. I told you that you deserved more, and then I chain you to me anyway."

“I accepted your vows. I said my own. This was my choice too.”

“I wish there could have been witnesses.” His fingers trail across her cheek, then down her jaw. “I wish—I wish I could give you the throne. You’d make a good queen.”

It makes her laugh; giggle, even though she doesn’t mean to offend him. “What would I do with a throne? Apart from try to take it apart to sell it for food.”

“Don’t. You don’t need to ever think like that.”

“I’m not sure I’ll ever break the habit,” she tells him truthfully. “But I didn’t say my vows because I wanted to become a princess. I want you, Ben, my first real friend. Not some ideal from a story. And if it really bothers you, when we escape from here, we can say the vows again. In front of other people.”

“That would be nice,” he whispers. 

She props herself up on her elbow, so they’re pressed up against each other again. Chasing his warmth. There’s something comforting about it, about his skin against hers, that has nothing to do with the things they’ve just done. She just likes touching him. 

“Do you think—do you think we might have broken the curse?” she wonders.

There’s a pause. A sharp pause, she thinks, like an intake of breath, even though he doesn’t do it physically.

“Rey—“

“We got married. We’ve done everything we should have to do.”

“No. I don’t think we did.”

“How do you know?”

“Nothing’s changed. Nothing—wonderful as that all was, I didn’t feel any big magical shifts.”

“I don’t know. I felt a lot of magic in the last few minutes.”

She can feel him smile against her skin. “Not like that. When he put the curse on me, I knew immediately.”

“Did it hurt?”

“It was the worst thing I’ve ever felt.”

She runs a soothing hand across his shoulder. “But maybe we need to test it. I can cast a light, under the blankets, just enough to see you by—“

“No.”

This time she feels the sharpness. It’s not enough to make her recoil, but it does sour the mood, bursting her happy little bubble. It’s like they’ve been in a cocoon and now the chill of the air strikes her, exacerbated by the cooling sweat on her skin.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“Don’t be—you shouldn’t be.” He sighs. “I’m the one who should be sorry—I’m just scared by the idea. But I promise you the curse isn’t lifted, Rey. If it was, I’d be able to tell you everything, and I can’t.”

“Well. It was worth a try.”

“Yes, I suppose it was.” He definitely sounds melancholy, and she supposes he has a right to be upset, being reminded that his curse won’t be lifted. Rey will just need to keep looking for a solution. “I should leave,” he whispers.

“Not yet. A little while longer. Please.” It can’t even be that late, can it?

“I don’t want to leave you. I never want to leave you.” He tugs the blankets around her, and she realizes she’s been shivering without him covering her. “But if I stay here and hold you, I’ll fall asleep. How could I not?”

“I want that. More than anything,” she says fervently. “But if Kylo finds us—“

“I don’t think that will be a problem.”

“Oh?” Then she casts her mind back to Ben’s arrival. She’d been so consumed by the pain of her wound, by fatigue and the way every small movement hurt her, that she’d not given his abrupt arrival much thought. He hadn’t said a word about her injury—just immediately set to healing her. And with everything that followed afterwards, the question of how he even knew that she was injured was chased completely from her thoughts. “Have you seen Kylo? Did he tell you what happened today?”

“I heard, yes.”

“Is Snoke angry with him? He killed another member of the Guard, you know.”

“Surprisingly, no. I think there were bigger issues involved in the court that distracted Snoke. His anger was elsewhere, so he isn’t going to punish Kylo.”

“How strange. And he isn’t going to punish you either?”

“I don’t think so. Though it’s always hard to tell with Snoke. But I think it’s the rest of the Guard who are facing his wrath.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Apparently they had a plan to kill Kylo—and Kylo’s important to Snoke for a lot of reasons.”

Rey’s stomach tightens at the idea of Kylo being in danger. She tries to tell herself it’s because they’d be trapped here if anything happened to him, but that’s not the entire truth. Not when he was so tender to her earlier today after she was wounded. She does care about what happens to Kylo, even if she doesn’t like that she does. Nor can she admit as much to Ben.

“I’ve come to realize that,” she says instead. “He’s how Snoke accesses the castle and the library—and he guards you. Does anybody else even know who you are?”

“No. Only Snoke. And yes, that’s part of why Snoke’s mad at the Guard.”

“Well...so long as it takes his attention away from you for a while.”

She’s drowsy now, with Ben tracing gentle circles across her skin. He finds the smooth patch on her belly that he healed less than an hour ago. “What will you tell Kylo about this?”

“I’ll tell him I fixed myself with spirit magic. He doesn’t seem to know or care much about that.”

Ben is quiet for a moment before he responds. “Yes, I suppose he’d believe that. I don’t think Snoke ever taught him much about that kind of magic.”

Rey perks up at this small snippet of information about Kylo’s past. “Snoke was his teacher?”

There’s another pause. “Yes.”

“That makes sense. I can’t see Snoke having much interest in learning how to heal.”

“No—it’s the antithesis of all he is, isn’t it?”

Ben’s hand is large enough that even with just his thumb grazing the blank space where her wound should be, he covers all of her hip and half her thigh. She’s not sure she’ll ever get used to how large he is. Between him and Kylo, she always feels small. Whatever they used to feed growing boys in the castle, it worked.

“Maybe I could learn how to heal all of your scars,” she tells him, reaching out blindly to trace a finger down the bridge of his nose, and then down to lips.

He kisses her fingertip. “And what would I tell Snoke? Besides—he’d only use it as an excuse to create more.”

“We probably shouldn’t talk about him,” Rey suggests. “It will only ruin the moment.”

Ben chuckles, a rich, rolling sound that passes into Rey where they are still pressed together. “No, I can’t say I like thinking about him when I’m naked.”

It draws a giggle from her, and the giggle turns into a yawn. She sinks into the pillows, and when she feels his lips graze her forehead, she can barely lift her head to respond.

“I’m going to go now,” he tells her. “But I love you. And despite everything—I think this is the happiest I’ve ever been.”

She smiles up at him, even as he shifts away—collecting his clothes, from the sounds of it. “Me too.”

She bites her lip to stifle a giggle at the thought of him running through the castle with his clothes bundled in his arms—all his skin on display, and she thinks it’s probably milky-white. But he must put something on before he leaves, and when he’s gone, she misses his warmth more than ever.

At least her blankets smell like Ben now.

* * *

When she wakes up to bright sunlight and stretches, she aches in strange new places. Her torso doesn’t hurt, yet between her legs is tender, and she’s more aware of the parts of her Ben breached last night than she’s ever been before. 

It’s the former part that’s the problem—yesterday Kylo left her with a deep gash in her belly, and now it’s gone. She inspects the place where the Guard’s blade had slashed her, but there’s no trace of it at all, the skin soft and clear.

While she’s happy to be healed, and happy not to be scarred, it’s going to be a difficult one to explain to Kylo, especially if he’s around today. 

The new aches, the surprising aches, are a nicer problem to have. Her hips aren’t used to being spread apart for so long, and then there’s a deep throbbing inside which reminds her of being entwined with Ben. She thinks—she hopes—it will remind her of him all day.

She’s a wife now. She’s somebody’s wife, and that’s not something she ever expected to happen. The idea of finally belonging to someone makes her feel like all the warmth of the sun is caught in her veins, and nothing can dent her mood today.

She takes a bath, adding a heaped handful of healing salts to the water and then soaks, before rising to go about her day. Kylo can’t be expecting her to be up and about, but she should be proactive anyway.

The tunic she was wearing yesterday when Vicrul attacked her is probably beyond repair. It’s still balled up on the refresher floor, and it has leaked blood onto the marble tiles, but luckily that wipes away easily. The fabric itself is stained so badly she’s not sure anything will get it out, and besides, there’s a hole slashed into it by Vicrul’s blade. She tosses it aside, deciding to salvage whatever clothes she can later on, and goes out to the chests in the chamber to find a clean tunic to wear. 

Nestled in with her laundered clothes—the ones she’s learned to wash in her tub with a bar of lavender soap—is the little trinket box she found when she was searching for blankets. She lifts it out to place it on top of another trunk, out of the way and space. It still glimmers in that delightful way, and she holds it up to the light, watching as a beam hits it and splits into a rainbow. Such clever craftmanship, even if it seems rather pointless to have a box with no opening.

She runs her thumb over the side of it, and something odd happens to the royal crest emblazoned there. It glows, as if it’s captured the sunbeam, shimmering like a rainbow on water. Then to her amazement, the box clicks open.

Despite the absence of any visible seam, or mechanism, the silver parts and the lid lifts up, to reveal a velvet-lined interior, and something nestled in the velvet.

Rey almost drops it in shock, and the contents spill out due to the angle she’s holding the box, tipping out to be caught at the last moment in her free hand. It’s more silver—but silver that looks far less old than the box itself. It’s a chain with a locket at the end, barely larger than the first joint on her thumb, and it too has the royal crest engraved into it.

She cradles it carefully as she opens it, and when she does, she’s surprised again to find what’s inside it. A little pouch, spun of sheer silk, and inside the pouch, a curl of dark hair. Baby hair, she’s fairly sure—and now she knows who the locket belongs to. Who the hair belongs to. This is Ben’s hair, and this must have been a gift to his mother, made the first time his hair was cut. 

Carefully, very carefully, she closes the trinket box and packs it back away in the trunk where it had come from. But the locket, she keeps, slipping it around her neck.

After all, she reasons to herself, no magic works in this castle without a very good reason. If the locket has been shown to her, then maybe the castle intends for her to have it. 

When she fixes the clasp behind her neck—a laborious task, because she’s not used to doing so—the locket naturally lies between her breasts, over her heart, hidden beneath her tunic. It’s perfect; keeping Ben close to heart during the day when he can’t be with her otherwise.

Her first step outside teaches her that a clear blue sky this late in autumn is a lie, a cruel trick. There’s no warmth to the air at all, only a bitter chill that chases her back in to gather Kylo’s cowl. It shouldn’t make her smile that she has another one to wear, after she’d destroyed the old one, but it does. It’s heavy and warm, and she likes the way it smells. He and Ben have similar scents—underpinned by the lavender soap she presumes all clothes laundered in the fortress smell of—but Kylo’s is stronger, a little more bitter. Whatever conditions Ben is kept in, he’s always able to come to her fresh and clean, whereas Kylo is always on the move. His scent is saltier, even metallic, carrying the faintest note of solder like the heat of his magic.

She’s not sure where to find him today. There’s a bowl of cream down for BB-8 in the kitchens, and the pantry has been restocked. There are even fresh flowers out in a bucket in the courtyard, though they won’t last long, not if the nights are going to be as frosty as she suspects. She needs to find ways of shaping some of the shattered glass into cloches to keep her plants warm, too. Kylo has fetched manure which will keep the soil temperature up, but it’s up to her to protect their leaves from the cold.

Eventually, she finds him in the library. He starts when she enters, and she makes a point of limping, exaggerating the aches she’s feeling. She’s not in pain—but nor can she walk as smoothly as she normally would. And if he mistakes the reason for why that is, well, that’s on him. She’s not lying to him.

He shoots to his feet, crossing the room at her approach, hovering near her with his arms outstretched like he’s worried she’d going to topple over. She’s pleased to see how quickly he moves, which would appear to confirm he’s uninjured—unpunished.

“Why are you out of bed? You should be resting!”

She can feel him scrutinizing her from beneath the mask. “Don’t worry. I’m much better than I was yesterday.”

“I hardly think—“

She lifts the cowl, and then the tunic underneath it, to show him her smooth, unmarred stomach. “It’s fine.”

He stares, and he stares. “How?”

“I added some magic of my own.” She limps past him towards the bureau.

“I’m glad you’re healed.” Then, “But you should never have been injured at all.”

She winces, reminded of Vicrul’s pale face, flushed with pain, his mouth twisted open in a howling scream. It had left her paralysed to see him that way, under the same curse as Ben. All she’d been able to think about was Ben suffering that way. “I got too close.”

“That’s not what I meant. It’s my job to protect you, and I failed.”

She looks at him, wishing for the hundredth time that she could read his face, or his mind. Unexpected tears prickle hot in her eyes, and she turns her head away so he can’t watch her blink them away. It isn’t his job. But he treats it like it is. Kidnapping her from Jakku hadn’t exactly endeared him to her, but if he hadn’t—if he hadn’t, she’d have never met Ben. She’d be dead, just like every other resident of Niima. Like Unkar Plutt, who had always intended to take her in the ways she’d first feared Kylo would.

Instead, Kylo risked his own safety, going against orders just to bring her to Snoke in the first place, and while she can never thank him for that, she doesn’t hate him for it as she once did. Life in the castle has been an easier existence than what she was used to. She’s learned so much, and maybe soon she’ll be able to use it to heal some of the wrongs out there beyond the castle walls.

And then—Kylo had risked himself once more, to bring her here instead of killing her when ordered. Until she’d watched him kill another one of his own men to protect her. She has no doubt in her mind Kylo will do anything she asks—anything which is within his power—and it’s a terrifying feeling. It’s like having all of his crackling hot power under own control, and it’s too much to comprehend even as exhilarating as it is.

“You couldn’t go against Snoke’s orders,” she replies, when the tears have adequately diverted.

“I could have looked for another loophole,” he says solemnly.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m all fixed up. I can teach you how, if you’d like,” she tells him sweetly.

“No, that’s—you’re clearly still in pain.”

“Not much,” she says, truthfully. “Though I don’t think I’m up to sparring today.”

She could. She could push through such minor discomfort—she’s fought in greater pain than this. But if the key to her freedom is beating Kylo, then she doesn’t want to do that just yet. Not when things are so new between her and Ben.

Between her and her husband.

She can’t win, and thereby secure her freedom, until she’s ready to take Ben with her—so anything she can do to delay Kylo releasing her, she’ll do.

It’s an issue of practicality, she tells herself. She’s made Ben a promise—and on top of that, she’s now added real vows to it. They’re leaving together, and for that to happen, she needs to break Ben’s curse. The answer is somewhere in this library, she’s sure of it.

But she also can’t lie to herself. Part of her wants to stay in the sanctuary of the castle. If she could guarantee that Snoke’s anger would be directed away from Ben, and he could come to her whole and unblemished every night—if they could do what they’d done last night, and more, as often as they wanted—she wouldn’t mind staying here. Not with Kylo ensuring the pantry is full, and giving her all the silphium she needs. Not with winter approaching as hard and fast as it is—she doesn’t think she wants to face her first real winter on the run.

“No,” Kylo agrees. “We’ll wait until you’re fully recovered. We can focus on theory, if you need to. Or I may even take a few days to commit myself to duties in the court.”

No! Does that mean Ben will be away at night again? “If you need to,” she says carefully. “So long as—“

“Don’t worry. I’ll ensure you have plenty of food. Company, too, if you want it.”

“Please.”

He nods, then moves past her, ready to give her peace.

But she doesn’t find peace when he’s left. All she can think about is how Kylo’s killed for her again. As much as she refuses to learn to hurt other people—when it comes down to it, she has no problem with letting Kylo do it on her behalf. She calls him a monster but allows him to shed blood—including his own—to protect her. And she still can’t find the words to thank him, or even forgive him for what he’s done.

So what does that make her?

* * *

She spends the day in the sanctuary of the library, but despite asking politely—out loud—if there’s anything on curses that she’s missing, she doesn’t come across any new books that give her a different insight into how to break Ben’s curse.

She needs to think about things differently—she can’t keep approaching the problem in the same way. It’s clear the answer isn’t in stories, especially not happy stories aimed at children. And the non-fiction books which talk about curses were written by people who never intended to use them, writing about them as cautionary tales and examples of dark magic which should never be trifled with.

Rey has no intention of using dark magic. She wants to undo dark magic; that’s the whole point. But all these old mages who spent thousands of words pontificating on the nature of the stuff never actually got around to having to counteract any of it.

In which case, maybe she needs to see some dark magic up close to understand it. And despite everything—she doesn’t need to leave the castle to do that. Not when there’s a source of it right here.

She shouldn’t. She really shouldn’t—but she mulls through her counter-arguments even as she leaves the library, locking it behind her and heading down the stairs.

Things are different to the last time she came up against the dungeon’s dark magic. First, Kylo isn’t around, so she can’t attack him. And even if he was around, she’s not angry at him anymore, at least not in the same way as she was last time. In fact, she’s in a much better mood overall. Her belly is full, and she hasn’t spent two weeks isolated and fearing she’s been abandoned. Instead she spent last night as close to another living being as it is possible to be.

But more than all of that, she knows better now. She knows the effect the dungeon’s magic can have on her, and she can throw up shields to protect herself against it.

Still, she was badly injured yesterday, even if there’s no trace of that injury anymore. It’s why she brings a lantern with her to light the way, igniting it from the stove in the kitchen, rather than relying on her magic to create a glowing ball. That way all of her magic can be focused on keeping that malevolent presence out of her head.

Below ground is as cold and damp as ever, and she huddles into Kylo’s cowl, holding the lantern as close as she dares for a source of heat. She’s very glad to not be a prisoner down here—what a horrible life that must have been.

Once again, she doesn’t need a map to guide her back to that room. It calls to her, despite her shield, itchy and rough against the edges of her mind. 

The door is locked, and she has to relent with her shield a little to jiggle the lock open. The whispers begin again, dulled as they were with her shield up, but they seem to be taking a different tack this time. Instead of delving into her anger, picking it apart and feeding it back to her, the presence seems…pleased.

She wrenches the door open. It seems stiffer than last time, the room as musty as ever behind the door. And it’s cold, but not in the same damp, drafty way as the rest of these rooms. This is a dry cold, the way nights in Jakku sometimes got.

_ You’re back _ , the voice preens. 

Rey steps across the threshold, and the first thing she notices is that the portrait she’d seen last time she was in here is now covered by a piece of cloth. Covered by Kylo—who else could have done such a thing? She pushes the cloth aside, struck once more by the queen’s melancholy gaze and Han Solo’s innate charm.

She’s related to them now. That is, if the way she and Ben exchanged vows does, indeed, count.

“I know who you are,” she says out loud. “Anakin.”

The presence inhales, if that’s at all possible. Then the whispers begin again, so indistinct she can’t make out what they’re saying, and she doesn’t have the patience to try and figure it out.

“I’m here to help free Ben,” she continues. “Your grandson. He’s trapped, by dark magic, and I need to find a way to release him from it.”

It feels silly to say that to nothingness. She’s not sure how much of his mind is left, or if it really is just impressions of Anakin’s final madness caught in the things he’d owned. The library is one thing, but that’s old, and has been built from hundreds of years of magical impressions being built on top of the spells that make it work as it does. Anakin’s magic was corrupt by the end, and therefore it might not work in the same way at all.

But she thinks, if there is anything really left of him, he will be interested in helping Ben. If nothing else than to protect his own lineage. 

There’s no real response that she can hear, so she creeps over to the cache of objects in the back corner, where the chill is worst of all, setting the lantern down on top of a trunk. She lifts the lid of a box, hastily stepping backwards at the cloud of dust that kicks up at the motion, but nothing else happens. The box has some jewels in it, that’s all. The next box has a dagger, but the edge is dull and corroded. She supposes she could repair it—people sharpen blades, don’t they—if she was really interested, but she’s seen slimmer, sharper knives elsewhere. 

There aren’t many boxes in this corner, and they all contain fancy items, things which are useless to Rey. But rifling through them does seem to rile up Anakin’s presence more.

_ Granddaughter— _

Now that’s a word she recognizes. Her heart trips over. “Yes, I suppose I am, now.” And despite everything, despite the call of darkness, she finds herself fighting a smile, biting a lip to stop it from forming. If that’s what Anakin is calling her, then she supposes the vows were perfectly valid.

Though she probably can’t tell Ben that. She doubts he’d approve of her rummaging through things corrupted by dark magic—or his family’s tragic history.

“All I need for you to do is tell me how to break Ben’s curse. However you can. I’ll even take my shield down if it will help you tell me.”

_ Death. _

She shivers. “Sorry, but that won’t do. I want Ben alive.”

_ Death is freedom. _

“Maybe it was for you, but I only just married him.” She sighs, turning back to the boxes and putting the lids back on them.

It seems this is going to be a wasted trip. She glances around at the remaining contents of the room. The throne is still covered up in its shroud of cloth, but there are other things she didn’t get to look at during her previous visit. With her shields fully ensconced, and Anakin’s presence dimmed to a faint creeping across her skin, she gets the urge to look through more of the room’s contents.

“Don’t worry, I won’t take anything,” she says to the presence as she cracks open the lid on a trunk. “Though I think it technically all belongs to me now—as much as it belongs to Ben, anyway.”

Something about that thought suddenly makes her want to cry. Because despite all her magic, and despite all her promises, she’s managed to marry a prince whose entire kingdom has been reduced to a locked-away, dusty room in the farthest corner of the dungeons. Nothing she seems to do actually helps Ben. It feels like a metaphor for her life—that she is never destined to own anything, or have anything, that hasn’t already been ravaged by Snoke.

Cloaks, and furs, and more jewels. She idly builds an inventory in her mind—the furs might be useful if the winter grows any fiercer, to keep her warmer than even Kylo’s cowl can manage. Although she thinks these might be ceremonial furs, if that is even a thing. But the jewels—the jewels will keep her belly full on a long journey to wherever she will go when she leaves here. They will pay for silence, from the people whose paths she crosses, and food, and places to sleep. Places she can sleep with Ben, protecting him from the worst kind of people they might encounter on the road.

She slips the jewels into her pocket.

Another crate contains portraits, lined up alongside each other, and the first one is of a pale-skinned young woman with elaborately styled brunette hair, and a sad mouth. She has to be Leia’s mother—Rey has seen sketches of her upstairs but none as regal as this.

Next is a man with sandy-blonde hair and blue eyes. He looks a little bit like Leia, and he’s posing in a billowing silk shirt, riding breeches, and glossy knee-high boots. The outfit is a little ridiculous, and if she weren’t in this unsettling room Rey might even giggle at it—especially the way he’s posed with one foot up on a chair. Despite that, there’s something boyish and likeable about him. He’s barely smiling, but it’s infectious. She wonders who he is, until she spots the lettering painted in the very bottom corner.  _ Prince Luke _ . Then the artist’s name and the year—around the time Queen Leia was crowned.

So this is Luke Skywalker. It’s obvious, now she sees the twin suns painted behind him: flat, overlapping yellow discs with fat rays spoking out across the backdrop. And he’s a real man, not the mythical creature he’d been discussed as in Jakku. But where is he now? Where has he been for years? Rey would bet all the jewels in her pocket that he’s long since dead, just like so many of the people in these portraits.

She rifles through the rest of the portraits, many of which have been sliced from their frames. But while there are many of Leia throughout the years, and more of her mother, there are none to be found of Ben. The only one in the entire castle has been destroyed so thoroughly.

Well. Maybe. 

Kylo did spend weeks teaching her how to put the shattered stained glass back together. How hard can canvas be?

“I’m taking this with me too,” she announces to the room, throwing the cloth completely off the family portrait and hoisting it into the air with her magic. “I’ll be back in a few days, if you want to talk. Let’s see if you can give me a more practical answer.”

BB-8 is waiting for her outside the room and dutifully trots beside her all the way back to the above ground, the portrait floating beside them the entire time, and when they reach the keep, she stashes it in one of the abandoned rooms, out of the way. She can begin to repair it when she has time—and finally she’ll be able to see Ben’s face. But for now, dusk is falling, and Ben himself will be here soon. Even if she won’t be able to see him, she’s never been so eager for his return.

* * *

The feeling must be mutual. She’s barely finished her second bath of the day, scrambling into her sleep garments, before there’s a quiet rap at the door. She grabs her blindfold from the bedpost where she ties it during the day, and is still wrapping it around her eyes when Ben pads inside.

“Careful,” she tells him. “I wasn’t ready—I almost saw you!”

He mutters something under his breath, but doesn’t halt his approach. And that’s the only thing he does say, for when he reaches the bed, they both reach for each other, Rey tangled underneath him as she’d been the night before. 

This time there’s very little hesitance, clothes abandoned with frantic hands. But despite his eagerness, Ben remains achingly gentle, and when she’s naked beneath him he seems more determined to kiss as much of her body as he can than to progress to more.

“Ben—“ she whines, and she feels him smile against her breast, which his mouth is currently engaged with.

“Yes…wife?”

“What are you doing?”

“You once told me you could recognize my face by touch alone. I’m trying to memorize the feel of your entire body with my mouth.”

“That’s not fair!”

“Why not?”

“Because you can see me—“

“I can. Perhaps I like hearing you sound so desperate for me. It’s good for the ego.”

She swats at his shoulder, but he refuses to be deterred, nipping at her belly. But when he breaches her with a finger, she winces and wriggles away.

“Sorry,” she says as he retreats, carefully putting space between them again. “I’m a little sore.”

“Don’t apologize. You should have told me you were in pain.”

“I’m not! Not really. But I think I have to learn to adjust.” She bites her lip. “This means we can’t sleep together again.”

“Somehow, you look even more disappointed by that than I feel. And I am  _ very _ disappointed by it.”

She shrugs. “I liked sleeping with you. I want to do it again—a lot.”

He laughs, tugging her close to him. “As do I. But there are other things we can do.”

“Oh?”

“I can bring you to pleasure. Like I did before. I don’t need to go inside you at all to do that.”

“I did like that. And—and I can touch you too.”

“Please.”

Truthfully, there are so many things she’s read about in her secret stash of books, intriguing ways of pleasing a man, but her courage fails her for the night. Ben hardly seems disappointed in the end though, and she’s proud of herself when he spills across her belly and breasts with quiet, pleading grunts.

If only he could stay with her, instead of retreating before the dawn.

* * *

She wakes up more restless than she should feel, considering how sated she was when Ben left her, and how quickly she fell asleep. But her dreams had been unsettling once more.

Despite Kylo being absent for most of the previous day—despite Ben being the person she spent the majority of her time with—and despite the time she’d spent with Ben being so significant, it wasn’t Ben who appeared in her dreams. Once again, Kylo had invaded.

And this time, it was worse.

Ben’s body above hers was replaced with the body she’d once glimpsed in the moonlight on Snoke’s compound, broad and pale and heavily muscled. Her fingers had tangled with long, dark curls, her gaze locked with deep, impenetrable eyes, as Kylo had invaded not only her dreams but…her. 

But was invasion the right thing to call it when she’d invited it? Begged for it, even?

In place of Ben’s gentleness, Kylo hadn’t been gentle at all. They’d done things she’s only read about, his hand tight in her hair and holding her in place as he’d pounded into her, drawing out pleasure she thinks even her imagination had outdone itself with.

And she’s furious about it. This isn’t Kylo’s place at all—Ben is her husband, Ben is the man who should be starring in her dreams. Kylo has no right to her thoughts or her imagination. She ignores the tiny thread, in the back of her mind, wondering if her anger is covering for the guilt she feels at Ben being replaced so easily. Instead, she lets her fury carry her straight to the library.

Kylo is nowhere to be found, and she’s perfectly happy about that. Instead, she retreats into her nook, where she will stubbornly read about exactly all the things she will only be doing with Ben, and prove to the imaginary Kylo who lives in her dreams who she really wants.

But something is wrong, as soon as she crawls inside. The energy is—it’s strange. She hasn’t been here for a few days, and though things seem exactly as she left them, it feels like it’s been disturbed. She’d noticed it when she hid in here two days ago, when Kylo commanded her to, when Vicrul came to the castle, but at the time she’d been fueled by adrenaline and her attention consumed with fear. Now she’s absolutely sure Kylo has been in here.

In fact, she knows it, as soon as she picks up the first book.  _ Pleasure and Harmony in the Marital Bed _ . It’s drenched in energy which isn’t her own.

Kylo’s looked at these books.

She feels a little dizzy at the thought—he knows what she’s been reading, and if that isn’t mortifying—but worse. He doesn’t know about Ben. So why exactly does he think she’s been reading these books? Surely he can’t think she’s interested in  _ him _ in that way?

She slaps her subconscious down at the suggestion that it’s not such a ridiculous notion, because she  _ is _ interested, in a way.

No, her fury only builds. Not only does Rey have nothing of her own, but Kylo seems determined to take everything away from Ben too. While neither of them is likely to tell the story, she’s fairly certain at this point that they did know each other growing up. Is that it—was Kylo a companion of Ben’s, was he jealous of the prince? Did his jealousy push him to Snoke’s side, with Snoke promising him everything that Ben had? So now Kylo has the castle that belongs to Ben, and the library—and the freedom. He’d even have the throne, if he can find a way to destroy Snoke and take that for his own.

Rey’s fury carries her down the steps into the dungeon, the lantern held aloft like a torch. Kylo thinks he has rights over all of this castle, and everything in it. Including her. But he doesn’t. And the way to prove that is by freeing Ben.

She didn’t lock the door behind her when she last left this room, and it swings open at the slightest touch this time. Immediately, the whispers begin, but she shakes her head and pushes them away.

“Have you thought anymore about it?” she says aloud. “Can you give me an answer that will rescue your grandson?”

But the whispers remain too indistinct. She begins her search again, rummaging, until she accidentally tugs off the cloth covering up the throne, spilling the cloth to the floor and revealing the dulled gold.

Yes, Kylo would have everything, and what he can’t have, he stashes away from the reach of everyone else.

Well. She’ll show him.

“You have one minute,” she demands of Anakin. “One minute before I leave, and I have no intention of returning this time. Not if you can’t help me.”

_ Death _ , the whispers say, echoing round and round her like a thousand voices all at once.

It’s no clearer than it was before. But now, with her anger at Kylo—she thinks maybe she might understand. Would Kylo’s death free Ben?

Possibly. Yet despite everything, she knows she can’t kill Kylo. She can’t even defeat him when they spar, and that was before she decided not to learn offensive magic or weapons training. Trying to really kill him wouldn’t end well for her—and if she tried, would she be any better than him? Besides, she’s spent the past few days worrying at the idea of somebody else trying to kill him. She’s not capable of doing it herself on any level.

It all makes her queasy. Ben would be so disappointed in her for even thinking like this. For even contemplating the idea. But Kylo…she thinks he’d understand the strategy. And that makes her head hurt.

“I can see why they leave you down here,” she says to the room.

But she does take one thing with her.

The throne.

* * *

It takes more than a little elbow grease to get it shining how she thinks it ought to. Though cleaning the thing is nothing compared to getting it out of the dungeons, magic or not. She’s not floated something so heavy and bulky for such a long period before. But now, she’s got it situated in the throne room, atop the dais at one end where it must have once stood. It gleams despite the lack of light.

“There we go,” she tells BB-8, who is winding his way around her ankles. “Back to where it should be. Now we just have to get Ben into it, where he belongs.”

BB-8 has no response to this, but given the eager way he starts trotting towards the kitchen, she thinks he’s only interested in being fed.

Rey lingers in the shadows, trying to imagine this room in its glory. Light spilling in through the stained glass, painting rainbows across the floor. Full of life, instead of dust and emptiness. Ben on the throne—she still can’t picture his face, but she knows he’d be regal.

Unbidden, an image from one of the hidden books rises to her thoughts, but now she’s replacing the couple from the drawing with herself and Ben. He on the throne, her on his lap. Straddling him, facing him, with nothing on to protect their modesty except a purple cloak wrapped around them.

Her belly tightens at the thought—even more of her clenches. Flushed, she steps away. There are so many things she wants to try with him, things she has no idea if he wants or desires. 

She feeds BB-8 and herself, and intends to head upstairs, to begin her repair work on the portrait she rescued. But something draws her back into the throne room, and before she crosses the threshold, she’s already half caught in the daydream from before.

When she turns the corner, there is a figure on the throne. But it isn’t Ben. No, sprawled on the throne, like he belongs there, is Kylo. 

The way he’s sat draws her gaze up him slowly—from his boots, up those black-clad legs, long and lithe, thighs almost as wide as her torso, then his enormous chest, and finally to the mask.

Impassive. Not like she is. Her body reacts, uncoiling, her subconscious all too happy to replace him in the fantasy.

“I see you’ve been going through things which don’t belong to you,” he says. And now she notices the tense way he’s holding himself on the throne.

She lifts her chin. “I’m not the only one.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I know where you’ve been. I know you’ve touched my books.”

“Oh?” His voice is very soft, very careful. “And what books would those be?”

Too late, she realizes she’s caught herself in a trap. The only weapon she has, the only shield against him, is her anger, the fury she hasn’t long buried. “So this is what you really want, isn’t it?”

He shakes his head, cocking it to one side. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“This. The throne. Of all the times you told me you had no interest in taking Snoke down, it was all lies.”

“No.”

“Yes!” She stomps her way up the dais. “Or you wouldn’t be trying it on for size right now. There’s nothing you want more in the world than this throne is there?”

“You’re wrong.” Now he’s getting as riled up as she is. 

Good. She wants to make him snap.

He stands up, and she’s reminded of how big he is. He towers over her, but more than that, he’s broad. Almost more mountain than man—but a man she’s watched kill with his bare hands.

For her. And though she should be scared of him, she isn’t anymore. Somewhere along the way, she lost that fear, and it’s been replaced by something that likes his stature, likes how he feels of raw power barely contained within leather. She  _ does _ like knowing that she has him in the palm of her hand.

So it’s not fear which spikes her blood, or makes her breath come quick and heavy. She has to smother all her ill-advised emotions in disdain for him.

“Am I, really?” she taunts him. “What could you possibly want more than anything else, if not all this power?”

He stares at her. He stares, he stares, and he stares.

Then he says one word in response.

“You.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be over on [Tumblr](https://stellardarlings.tumblr.com/) and now also [Twitter](https://twitter.com/stellardarlings), with a teaser before the next chapter.


	21. Chapter Twenty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo Ren is many things, but he is never right. 
> 
> Time and experience should have taught him that long ago, yet he’s still stepped down from the throne to confess he wants Rey. Not as Ben, but as Kylo. 
> 
> “You.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Welcome back to another edition of me being completely unable to keep a chapter to a reasonable word count. This one is a wild ride. We've got everything: angst, smut, a little bit of action...and of course a cliffhanger. 
> 
> One thing I have done is a solid outline of the rest of this story, compiling all the ideas I've been tossing about with my beta into a real typed-up per-chapter plan*, so I've added a proper chapter count. Now you know how much longer we're on this ride for. If anybody thought we were into the home stretch, nope, we're approaching the end of Act Two and there are big things on the way.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> *Rest assured there has always been a plan and it's always been written down, but it's not been quite as organised as it is at the moment.

Kylo Ren is many things, but he is never right. 

Time and experience should have taught him that long ago, yet he’s still stepped down from the throne to confess he wants Rey. Not as Ben, but as Kylo. 

“You.” 

The word hangs in the space between them, and despite all the magic he knows, he still hasn’t learned of a way to undo time. Nor words.

One word. That’s all he wants to take back. 

He swears she goaded him into saying it, as if she was waiting—even eager—for the truth. But as he watches emotions roll across her face—disbelief, shock, her eyes widening, her mouth falling slightly open so her breath escapes in a silent gust—he knows this isn’t what she wanted to hear at all.

He knows, because she shakes her head, taking a step back from him, down the steps leading up to the dais. She backs away, but she doesn’t take her eyes from him, like he’s a dangerous animal she dares not let out of her sight. Only when he doesn’t move to follow her, when she’s at the foot of the dais, does she turn away from him. She turns her back on him, and she runs. Out through the gaping wound of the doorway, out of his sight, leaving him with only the fading echo of her footsteps on the stone.

And to think the day started so well.

* * *

There was another thing Kylo was wrong about—in this case, he was wrong to give into his desires, even wrought out as he was by Vicrul’s attack on Rey. But he’d wanted to hold her, to know she was warm and whole, and the words had fallen unbidden, untamed from his lips. These words, though, he wouldn’t have taken back for the kingdom itself. Not for the whole world. Not for his own life.

He’d put no thought into his vows, but they’d come naturally, his mind taking apart the traditional marriage vows and stitching them back together into something befitting Rey. And she’d responded alike, their words weaving around them like a spell of their own. He’d given Rey everything she wanted—mostly, Ben—and come out of the night with her as his wife.

Of all the events that have occurred over this strange year, this is the one Kylo could have predicted the least, but it’s the one he’s happiest about. Even if it’s only for a little while, even if it’s nothing close to the ceremony he should have provided for her, Rey is his wife, and he has pledged his soul to her. As she deserves.

But no matter his vows, he has to let her go soon. If he doesn’t, what is his vow to love her even worth? Empty words without action to prove he means them.

It’s only a matter of time. She will beat him, because despite her distaste for offensive magic and offensive fighting, she’s a natural at what she does, and she’ll figure it out. Most of all, he suspects she longs for her freedom more than anything. For now, he’ll enjoy whatever she gives him—drinking it all in—every morsel of her coming apart at his touch like a cascade of sparks along his skin, so he can look back on this part of his life fondly. A little warmth, tucked down in his soul, some of her light to guide him through the darkness that more decades with Snoke will entail.

He will carry her with him and pretend there is any good in him at all.

* * *

She’s more eager than usual when he creeps into her chamber at night. For his part, he’s still reeling from her rejection earlier. Every day it becomes harder and harder to remember that how she feels about him in the darkness is not how she feels about him during the day. She’s perfectly capable of rebuking Kylo and then treating Ben with utter tenderness, because she doesn’t understand that he’s still stinging from her flight away.

Despite his best attempts, she knows something is the matter as soon as he comes close. She’s immediately on him, bringing him down to the bed so she can wrap her limbs around him, but after a few kisses, she pulls away.

“Are you alright?” she inquires. “You seem…”

He buries his face in the crook of her neck, trying to distract her with his tongue and teeth, but she tugs at his hair to make him stop.

“Ben, are you injured?” she asks urgently.

“Not at all.”

“I thought—nevermind.” And whatever she was musing, it seems to be discarded immediately, because she’s kissing him again, hot and hard, clever fingers already trying to peel his clothes away.

He pauses. She limped so much yesterday, then cringed away in pain that night— “Are you healed enough?”

“Yes,” she hisses insistently. Then she begins to tug her own tunic off, revealing a complete lack of breastband underneath.

Just like every time he has seen her bare chested in this way, his mouth goes dry, his head emptying of coherent thought at embarrassing speed. She’s so pretty like this—smaller than many other women, he’s aware, but he likes the curve of her. He likes the weight of her in his hands, when he’s able to completely cover her up with his palms. And there’s something about how vulnerable she is beneath him as she is, hair messy and loose, mouth as pink and swollen as the tips of her breasts—it’s special, that she reveals herself in this way.

Pretty enough to deserve more kisses, and he delivers them everywhere, saliva pooling back into his mouth when he decides what he should do next. 

She practically presses his face into her chest as his mouth finds its target, and he should be alarmed by the way her hand is clamped in his hair, but it’s encouraging to him how much she likes this. That soon passes, and she starts to wriggle free of her leggings, her hand going for the ties on his breeches immediately after.

“There’s no rush,” he whispers against the curve of her collarbone. “We have until dawn.” And if he’s honest with himself, if he lasts as long as he has previously, this might all be over and done with in five minutes. He has to do something to counteract the way she makes him lose control, to ensure she really does want him to keep returning to her bed.

“But I want you so much,” she tells him, and he wriggles away from her questing hand, which is trying to make its way between his legs.

She’s not eager, she’s impatient. It does his ego good, after the events of the day.

He takes her hand, circling her slender wrist in his grasp, easily. Then he lifts it, shifting it far from where she’d been trying to touch, and pins it over her head. It doesn’t take much strength at all—in fact, it takes more of his concentration not to hurt her. He doesn’t want to leave bruises, but he’s sure the mattress is soft and yielding even where he is not.

She doesn’t protest, only changes tactics, switching to her other hand. And this he catches before it even reaches his belly, lifting it to join the other, both caught in one hand of his own.

He expects her to wriggle, to try and throw him off, to demand he release her. Instead, he hears her sharp intake of breath.

He doesn’t know what to do next.

“Rey—“

“Please.”

At her soft entreaty, he immediately releases her wrists. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, horrified that he’d even thought to do such a thing. She whimpers, but doesn’t shift her hands from where he’d had them pinned.

“No—please,” she says again.

Please…what? What is it she so badly wants? He doesn’t understand at all. But when she wriggles against him his hand instinctively clamps back down, and she settles into the hold with a sigh. That? Is that what she wanted? He’s more confused than ever.

“I have to prepare you, Rey. I have to be sure I don’t hurt you.”

She nods frantically beneath the blindfold, and still she doesn’t strain. Not until the fingers of his free hand delve between her legs, finding her slick and eager.

He watches her face carefully as he touches her. She’s breathier than normal, whiny, and though she does start to struggle against his hand when he finds her sweetest spot, she’s not really trying to get him off of her. Not with tooth and nail like Rey would if she were truly frightened or wanted to be free.

He still marvels at how she feels against his fingertips. So soft, and when he presses in, warm and snug, yielding as he burrows deeper. She doesn’t seem uncomfortable when he does this, and she nods her head when he rubs over places inside her that feel good. He adds a second finger, and she fits so perfectly around him—he remembers the pressure, the friction of her body wrapped around his, and he has to start reciting old magic texts in his head to stop his memories from overwhelming him.

She sighs his name, spreading her legs wider, and he bends to place kisses on her belly. She’s intoxicating, up close like this, but when they’re pressed together he’s reminded of how much smaller she is. He’s spent all of his adult life being told of how big he is, perfect for being molded into a beast, a brute, and he’s not sure the last few weeks with Rey have been enough practice to ensure he is as gentle as he should be. He must hold back, must always rein his urges in, because he can’t bear to see Rey limping like she did after the first time.

So he watches her, and keeps his pace slow, and tries to touch her with as much reverence and gentleness as she deserves. He lets her face guide him, and the eager cant of her hips as her arousal builds, and the way her energy shines brighter and brighter, spilling its light over him. All the way he kisses her, everywhere: a quick catch of her lips, a press to her collarbones, a curious exploration under the curve of her breast.

When his mouth creeps across the curve and takes the pink tip inside again, she breaks apart, shuddering under him and around him as she pants out his name, fingers clutching at nothing at all. He releases her hands to let her burrow them into the blanket instead.

She pulls him in for a real kiss then, and he prepares to settle between her legs, sure she is ready for him now. But it seems she still has other ideas, and pushes against his chest before he can lower himself onto her.

“I thought—“ She bites her lip, and he waits for her. 

Thought is a foreign land to him right now—all he is capable of containing is anticipation. Anticipation of being inside Rey again, entwined with her, their bodies pressed so close that their energies blend until it’s difficult to tell where he ends and she begins. 

“I’ve read some books,” she says, courage faltering and the last word dropping to a whisper. “And I thought—there are different ways of us…coming together.”

He’s not sure if the tangle of images that collide together in his mind, vying for attention, count as thoughts. Wishes, perhaps. He’s read the books she’s talking about too, and now the etchings are vivid in his mind’s eye, each as tempting as the last.

“Is there something you want to try?” he asks around a dry throat. She can’t ask him to choose—what will make the experience last the longest? What will allow him to merge his spirit with Rey’s entirely and never have to let her go?

“I—yes?” She pushes against his chest again, and he allows himself to be moved, until he is sitting upright and she’s able to roll herself over.

She’s right in front of him, the elegant sweep of her back laid out, and as he watches, she props herself on her elbows, pushing herself to her knees.

His mind really does go blank then, his entire body unable to do anything except drink in the view she’s presenting to him. None of the etchings had been anywhere near capable of capturing this—but then, this is Rey. How could any artist have known such an enticing woman was going to be born, and end up in his bed, and display her most intimate places to him like this?

He places a trembling hand on one buttock, stroking a gentle thumb across her skin where she glistens. But then he withdraws the hand, curling it into a fist, trying to get himself under control. She’s offering this for his sake.

He knows, because Rey is lying to him. This position isn’t in her books; it’s too sinful to have been committed to print. He’s heard of it through talk in the fortress, and while he has no way of knowing where Rey knows it from, she deserves better than him taking her in such a beastly way. It wouldn’t be soft, and reverent, and sweet, like he wants to be for her. Mounting her like—like an animal, like the beasts he’s seen rutting into each other—it doesn’t matter if the idea of it makes him dizzy with desperation. This isn’t about him. Rey has to come first, always.

He’s been silent too long, and Rey senses his hesitation. She scrambles onto her knees properly, turning to face him and pulling the blanket up with her to hide her nakedness from him.

“It doesn’t matter,” she tells him, and he captures her for a kiss.

He’s not sure what he’s trying to say in the kiss, and he doubts that she understands it either. Words would be better but—Kylo is terrible at words. How to tell her that she is precious, and he has to treat her that way? That when they join together, he wants to be able to see her face, to ensure he doesn’t misjudge his own strength and hurt her?

She doesn’t shy away from the kiss, but it seems she is only enduring it. He pulls away to kiss her forehead, then her chin. 

“I want to be face to face with you,” he tells her, and hopes she understands. She nods, and then nods again when he tests her with his fingers, to see if she is still wet and eager.

Finding her that way, he tugs the blanket from her, flinging it the other side of the bed. He takes her in his arms, gathering her close, and she molds herself to him, embarrassment apparently forgotten.

He’s not sure what he’s doing, what he intends, until he lifts her into his lap. It doesn’t take much strength at all, although Rey makes a little yip of surprise before settling herself in properly. She spreads her legs, wrapping them around his waist, and that brings them fully face to face. Almost into alignment.

It takes a moment or two of fumbling, then he’s sliding inside her once again. He keeps one arm under her thighs, ready to brace her if it’s too much, but she sinks down with an expression of deep concentration, and not a flicker of pain.

He’s not feeling any pain either. Unless too much sensation counts as a kind of pain, and if it does, it’s one he will gladly bear. She’s clenched around him, and warm, and if there were thoughts in his brain they’d be useless anyway because his entire existence is now centered around where they’re connected.

Rey drapes her arms over his shoulders, and even though she is slightly raised above him in this position, his head remains higher than hers. It means that he can easily bury his nose into her tangled hair, press his lips against her temple, catch her earlobe between his teeth. That makes her giggle for some reason, and her giggling is a revelation. The way she clenches around him as she does sends lightning shooting up his spine.

How to move, once they’re like this, is instinctual. Rey bites her lip and begins to rock against him, tucked tight to his body. He responds, letting her set the pace, trying to match the rhythm she sets. He’s able to kiss her, as often as he likes, and she smiles every time he does. If she was disappointed before, it seems long forgotten, her face slightly tipped back as if basking in the sun.

“You’re beautiful,” he tells her, tucking a lock of errant hair behind her ear, then nuzzling into her cheek. He doesn’t tell her that often enough, but he should. She’s the most precious thing in the world to him, worth more than anything else in the castle, or the kingdom. He’s seen paintings and sculptures and tapestries made by masters, but none of them compare. If only he could see her in sunlight, like this. All of her skin, radiant as it ought to be.

He slips his fingers between them, to touch her where she responds the most, and she melts into the touch, rocking faster, grinding against his hand. It doesn’t take much, she’s already keyed up, and in mere moments she’s pulsing around him, sending cascades of her bright aura spilling over him. It’s like a wave of pleasure washing over him, and it threatens to pull him under too. 

He grits his teeth, lifting her in his hands so he has the room to really move—to thrust up into her warmth over and over—and only when her fingers tighten around his upper arms, digging into the muscle, does he realize that he’s lost control. But it’s too late by then—it’s over—the wave has dragged him down, and he can’t breathe, he can’t think, he can’t do anything except surrender himself to the sheer white void. 

When color returns to the world—and sense, and yes, even thought—Rey is sprawled across his legs. He panics.

“Are you okay?” His hand finds her thighs, and he stops himself a second before he tugs her legs apart, as if he’ll be able to see if he’s hurt her. “Was I too rough?”

Rey responds to his intentions anyway, shifting her thighs so he can see between them, and there is white among the pink, and that almost rouses him again. He’s not sure why, but even though he’s spent, over-sensitized, that image sends thrills through him.

She shakes her head, a soft, satisfied smile tugging at her mouth. “No. I liked it,” she tells him, curling back into his torso. “We should try more things.”

He nods breathlessly. They should. He wants to. But he’ll wait until tomorrow, to see how she moves around Kylo, before judging if the moments of uncontrolled pleasure were worth it.

And that only reminds him that he still needs to face her as Kylo. Wrapping his arms around her and kissing her once more, he wishes the dawn will never come.

* * *

Kylo Ren is many things, and chief among them, a coward.

But this morning he does his best to face this side of himself he likes the least, and he doesn’t run away. He could leave her a note and go to the fortress for the day; the fallout of Vicrul’s death has barely begun. But he decides he must stay and face Rey, whatever reaction she gives him this morning. Disdain is most likely, but he’ll bear it with as much grace as he can muster.

Except, by the time he emerges from the tower room, having worked himself into an appropriate state to be able to do so, she is nowhere to be found. He checks the kitchen and the courtyard, the throne room and the mess hall. He looks in the workshops and her chamber, then the library. He even descends down into the dungeons, deja vu tickling at the back of his mind, but she isn’t anywhere. 

It means, of course, that he knows exactly where she is. She’s hiding in her nook in the library and she doesn’t want to come out.

He can’t force her. Well—he can force her, but where would that get him? After telling her that he wants her, for him to barge into a place she’s holding sacred and try to drag her out—she wouldn’t take it kindly. She’d probably assume he’d come to make good on his desire.

So, his cowardice proved correct, he does leave her a note and treads through the tunnels back towards the fortress anyway.

He’s visited the fortress briefly in the past couple of days, after returning Vicrul’s body to Snoke. The place is in turmoil. The remaining Guard have had to take it in turns flogging each other, and they’ve also had to endure hours of Snoke tearing through their thoughts for any trace of further treachery. Kylo’s sure there isn’t any; the men are genuinely loyal to Snoke, and only intended to act against Kylo through their own idiocy. But the Guard have a brotherly bond with each other which Kylo was never really part of, and watching each other suffer, having to inflict that suffering themselves, Kylo suspects is beyond even their capacity for delighting in pain. 

And though Kylo has no great affection for the men, he pities anybody who has to suffer through Snoke’s particular style of punishment.

Snoke will forgive them sooner rather than later. They’re a useful tool for him, and he wields complete control over them. He can’t push them too far without losing their loyalty—and Kylo is sure they will only emerge from this with an even greater hatred for himself instead.

What Kylo is not expecting, when he steps into the throne room, is Hux still in his place at Snoke’s right hand. Unmasked.

He can’t help the shiver of fury which runs through him at the sight. Hux almost betrayed Snoke, albeit unwittingly—and yet still he’s unleashed? Kylo recalls the discussions they’d had about Hux, and Snoke’s opinion of him as a useful pet; when does he exceed his usefulness if not when almost losing his master a crucial tool? Hux should be locked inside one of these forsaken contraptions like the rest of them, his sneering, pallid face blessedly shielded from everyone who has to look at it.

Yet the sneer is missing today. In fact, Hux quails at Kylo’s first step inside the throne room, visibly shrinking away. His skin has a grayer tint than normal, and though not visibly bruised or injured, there’s an air to him like a broken bird. The Guard are regarding Hux like a pack of wolves who have found bleeding prey. Maybe Kylo won’t be the source of their enmity; maybe Hux was the one who stoked up the plan which led to Vicrul’s death and they intend to take the price from him in blood. But also, Kylo is fairly certain Snoke has made his pincer-like way through Hux’s mind too, and though he may not have any physical wounds, the psychic wounds are fresh and raw.

Perhaps Kylo doesn’t pity anybody who’s been punished by Snoke after all.

“Ah!” Snoke exclaims upon seeing him. “Just the man I’ve been waiting for.”

Kylo isn’t foolish, or at least he tries not to be. Even if he managed to convince Snoke that Vicrul's death was justified, Kylo's still waiting for the other shoe to drop. A delighted Snoke is never a good sign.

“My lord,” he replies cautiously, kneeling before the throne. “Do you have a mission for me?”

“Of course,” Snoke replies with a grin. “It seems you might be the only person around here I can place any trust in.”

“Your faith in me is gracious.”

“I certainly hope so. I need somebody to investigate the Nezal household, to see if there really is proof of their Resistance activities before they were slaughtered.”

His heart thunders in his ears—he can’t leave Rey now. He can give her a day or two of space from him, but for every hour that passes, his courage wanes. He must face her soon, and give her the grace to pretend nothing happened, that he confessed nothing. If Snoke sends him away, she’ll think he’s abandoned her again.

“In Coruscant, my lord?”

“And their estate out in—where was it?” Snoke snaps his fingers in Hux’s direction, and Hux startles away from the gesture.

“Ch-Chaaktil, my lord,” Hux supplies.

No. That’s too far away. It’s a day’s hard riding in each direction—and knowing Snoke, he’ll expect Kylo to leave immediately.

“Well?” Snoke demands.

“I’d be honored to prove your trust in me is well-placed,” Kylo begins, hopelessly fishing around for an excuse. And then he sees her, in her wheeled chair, in the corner of the room. “However, I was the one who gave you that name. Surely you want an independent party to verify that what I tell you is true, rather than relying on me to be truthful when my own freedom is at stake?”

“How so?”

“I know it’s not just proof of the Resistance you seek, my lord. You wish to find Luke Skywalker. And even despite the clearest instructions from you on that matter, I cannot guarantee that I will be impartial if I encounter him.”

Snoke leans back in the throne, rapping his bony fingers on the arm. “Yes, I do want to know that, but who else am I to send? Hux is a quivering wreck who would happily make up a lie to prove your deceit to me, and the Guard are in no fit state to travel anywhere at the moment.”

“Send Phasma, my lord.”

Phasma’s head jerks up in the chair, her helmet tilting to one side as she regards Kylo, as if considering if he’s trying to humiliate her.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Ren, but Captain Phasma is incapable of walking at the moment.”

“She can take a transport and a servant to guide her. She’s perfectly capable of getting around, and she need not be upright to intimidate the truth out of those she interrogates. And she has no loyalty to me, so won’t lie on my behalf.”

Snoke steeples his hands. Phasma is inscrutable behind her mask, and Kylo has no idea if she’s thankful somebody isn’t treating her like she is useless, or assuming he is being patronizing. Either way, Snoke is delighted with the plan.

“So you would sacrifice your own chance at revenge against Skywalker to prove your loyalty to me?” he asks, and it’s practically a purr of satisfaction.

“I would, my lord.”

“Excellent, excellent.” He unfurls his hideous smile. “You!” He points in the direction of a wan serving girl. “Go arrange a transport and accompaniment for Captain Phasma.”

“And my gun,” Phasma casually orders. “I’ll be ready within the hour.”

Kylo has no idea what Phasma will find at either of the Nezal residences, and whether she will thank him for sending her on a wildgoose chase, but he doesn’t care. He’s going nowhere, except back to the castle.

* * *

There’s still no sign of Rey on his return to the castle, except for some crumbs on a plate in the kitchen which wasn’t there this morning.

He doesn’t do a circuit of the castle this time, searching for her energy and still not finding it. He makes a journey to the Tekkas for fresh meat pie and takes it into the library, knocking on the alcove to see if she will emerge.

She doesn’t, even when he announces there is pie, and he leaves it on the bureau, making a loud show of leaving the library. Then he settles on the steps outside, waiting for her to emerge so he can swoop back in when she crawls out. He feels bad about the tactic—it’s a trap, and not the space she deserves, but he can’t go on like this for days.

However, he doesn’t hear a sound at all from inside, not even when his buttocks start going numb from being settled on the cold stone for so long. He regrets not saving his own portion of pie so his hands would at least be warm.

BB-8 comes sniffing around, and then, sensing there is no food to be had, disappears again. It’s strange indeed that the cat isn’t inside with Rey, but perhaps he got restless after so many hours in a small space, and she let him out to explore.

Not long after BB-8 trots down the staircase and into the gloom below, Kylo hears noises—scuffling on the stone. He assumes the cat is playing some game, likely with some poor vermin it has managed to hunt and slaughter. But the scuffling solidifies into footsteps down below, and that has Kylo alert.

Someone else is in the castle. Whoever it is, they’re strong enough to mask their energy.

He retreats, as stealthily as he can, from the top of the stairs to a dark corner nearby, where he can watch whoever emerges without them seeing him. Then he draws his sword and waits.

It doesn’t take long. Muffled footfalls sound on the carpet, and then the top of a head appears, ducked down, difficult to see in the gloom. He still senses nothing from whoever it is, no signature or presence that would help him identify them. All he’s able to gather in that split-second is the person is unmasked.

He’s already moving, grabbing them and shoving them up against the wall with the point of his sword aimed at their throat—and Rey lets out a shriek of surprise.

He lets go.

Kylo steps back, abandoning the sword with a clatter. She watches it fall with wide eyes, then her hand comes up to rest on her throat. The throat he’d almost slit.

Her fear melts into her usual fury, but he’s unable to feel anything other than his own astonishment.

“What was that about?” she demands, kicking the sword away from her.

“You were supposed to be in the library,” he tells her. “I tried to search the castle for you and you were nowhere—“

“I was in my chamber,” she says haughtily. “Hiding myself from you.”

“You were hiding?” He can’t help asking, though it’s a question loaded with idiocy. He’s known all day that she’s been hiding—it’s not that specifically which he’s questioning. Rather, it’s the way she’s been successful at it, without the library’s protective walls to aid her.

She raises her chin but doesn’t meet his eyes. “Of course, I should have known that after yesterday, you wouldn’t allow such a thing, and you’d try to lay your hands on me—“

“I thought you were an intruder,” he tells her bluntly, even as bile rises into his throat. She thought he’d been grabbing her for another purpose. That after she’d run away from him yesterday, he’d decided to claim her anyway. “I have no intentions towards you in that way.”

“That’s funny, because that’s not what you said yesterday.” She’s pushing past him, to go back down the staircase.

“Not if you aren’t willing,” he insists. “And as you aren’t…”

“How gracious of you,” she spits, but he bars her with his arm against the wall, ignoring the knot in his belly at the way she flinches from his proximity. All those months of progress, where she at least tolerated his company and had lost her fear of being violated by him. Lost with one foolish word.

But there are still other issues at hand.

“I need to know, Rey—have you successfully been shielding yourself all day?”

She swallows, but nods. “I have.”

The knot twists tighter, and his concern switches from her disdain of him to the progress she’s made.

He needs more time with her, but she needs no more time with him. He’s out of excuses to keep her with him, and her repeated rejection of Kylo has only made it clear how much she’s only staying for one reason—Ben. A lie. His lie.

It’s time for him to show her how to be rid of Kylo, once and for all.

“Very well,” he replies. “Then you have one final test to pass, and you’re free. Defeat me, and you’ll never have to suffer my company again.”

She barely reacts to the reminder. “A fine incentive, indeed.”

“From now on, it’s the only training we’ll do.” It’s an escape for him, too. The less he has to face her as Kylo and suffer her disdain, the better. “I’ll be in the mess hall, waiting for your challenge.”

It’s a gamble. She may come challenge him everyday, and he may lose very quickly. But he hopes she won’t, he hopes she’ll delay to ensure more time with Ben. Surely she knows—she must know—that she can’t take Ben with her when she goes? That will delay her, make her less eager to leave, especially if she won’t interact with Kylo outside of challenges. He hopes.

“I look forward to beating you,” she says, and he’s afraid. Afraid he’s completely misjudged her, from the steel in her voice and the determination in her face. Then she ducks under his arm, sprinting back down the stairs and out of his sight.

* * *

Kylo knows before he even reaches her chamber that Rey is restless tonight. So restless, in fact, that her energy seeps out beyond the room, creeping through the castle and drawing him towards her. He’s under no misapprehension about what has her this way—how could she be calm after today? He certainly can’t be. 

A laugh stutters and dies in his throat when he finally enters the room and finds her, kneeling in the bed facing him—her clothes already abandoned on the floor beside it.

The laughter is born of nerves, and the odd, fluttering tension he gets low in his belly whenever he sees her like this. So beautiful. So unfathomable that she should be so welcoming of him.

And she isn’t. Not really. She’s made that very clear over the past handful of days—she’s only giving Ben what she thinks he will like. A flash of shame and desire rushes through him at the memory of her kneeling before him, on her hands and knees. She’s trying to find ways of pleasing him, rather than asking for what she really wants. Worse, she’s made it very clear that she’s afraid of Kylo once more. She feels the opposite of desire for him.

Knowing that, the shame wins out over the desire, even though he’s sure the sight of her like this will be seared into his memory until he’s an old man, chasing him from this life into the next.

“Rey—“ He clears his throat, screws his eyes shut, though he knows she can’t see that. “I—I can’t stay.”

He keeps his eyes closed as he waits for a response. He only knows she’s covered herself up by the sound of shuffling blankets. 

“Why not?” she asks, and her voice is so small as she does so.

“I should never have let it get this far. You still don’t know—“

“This, again?” she cuts in. “I made my choice. I gave you my vows—my words and body. And now you want to back out after giving the same to me?”

“But—“

“Ben Solo, if you want to have this conversation, you do it here. You come and you put your hands on me and tell me you don’t want me.”

He doesn’t do that. Instead, he just runs away.

He does it because he knows she’s right—that if he touched her, even cupping her face in his hand, he’d be lost. He’s weak. The only way to make the right choice is to physically put space between them, and he does that by bolting from the room, sprinting up the steps to the tower room and collapsing behind the locked door at the top.

To his horror, he hears movement below. He’s not sure what it is until he hears her voice—and the soft creak of her chamber door opening.

“Ben?” she calls, and he holds his breath, waiting to see what she’ll do next. She can’t get through the portal he’s added to the bottom of the staircase, but she knows he’s up here. Will she try and gain access another way?

He can’t hear her moving around, her footsteps swallowed up by the carpet, but she calls out for him a few more times, the volume of her voice changing as she gets further away, then returns. He only breathes deeply again when her chamber door is closed behind her. He’s safe until another dawn.

* * *

Rey does challenge Kylo the next day. He doesn’t expect to see her—in fact, he settles in to wait in the coolness of the mess hall, wishing he could bring a book out of the library to occupy his time. The underfloor heating was never installed in here. The room relies on the enormous twin fireplaces which he can’t justify lighting, not when he wouldn’t be able to explain to Snoke why he was in the castle when he’s supposed to be terrorizing villagers near Botor. 

It turns out, he doesn’t have to worry about getting cold. Not when Rey arrives immediately after breakfast, with her staff strapped to her back and grim determination etched into her face.

He retrieves a staff of his own from his selection of weapons in the corner.

“The rules are simple,” he tells her. “First, you must disarm me.”

She tries it straight away, of course, tugging at the weapon in his hand with magic, but he’s thrown up a shield against that. He’s relieved that when he tries to do the same in return, she’s also blocking him.

“Good,” he says, staking out his place in the center of the hall, and she comes to stand opposite him, three staff lengths away. “Second, I must yield. And I’ll only do that if the fight will otherwise result in my death.”

She shrugs. “Works for me.”

So they begin.

They’re both cautious, at first, circling around and feinting to try and get the other to open up a spot to get a hit in. Rey is the first to tire of this game, coming at him with a snarl, and he easily blocks her, the clash of the two staffs setting his teeth ringing beneath the helmet. Her sloppy attack allows him to swing for her ribs, and she only just slides out of the way.

Then it’s several minutes of knocks and misses, moving so fast he’s sweating beneath his armor despite the cold room. Rey is swifter than he is but he has no intention of letting her win, and it’s just a matter of tiring her out. Of defending himself against her attacks until she becomes sloppy enough to disarm.

What he doesn’t expect is for her to throw her staff at him, guided as much by magic as her own aim, knocking into his knees and sending him crashing to the floor.

He flips onto his back but she’s already on him, straddling his torso while holding her hand out over his own, trying to pry his fist open with magic. Trying to get him to let go of his staff. 

And because she’s too focused on that, it makes it easy to twist and roll until she’s the one underneath him. He has her hands pinned in one of his again, and this time she does writhe, trying to push him off. Tooth and nail. His body reacts, despite his best efforts, to the feel of her so close to him, denied as it had been last night. Even her scent is similar, that edge of sweat so close to him. 

And with the space between his ears filled with nothing except idiocy, he lets his mouth run away with him again.

“You like being pinned,” he taunts her.

Immediately, her eyes go wide, her teeth set in a grimace. “Get. Off. Me,” she demands between them, shoving at him with all her strength, physical and magical. He rolls, shocked at his own stupidity, his vulgarity, at her visceral reaction to it, and she’s out from under him, back on her feet.

“I yield,” she tells him, her back turned, and he can’t see what her reaction is. He only knows it must be horror at him once again declaring his interest in such a crude way. She summons her staff, and disappears, leaving him lying on the hard stone floor, wondering if it’s possible to cut his own tongue out.

* * *

He does at least go to her that night. He’s not sure why—perhaps to apologize. Both Kylo and Ben have hurt her in the past day, and while he can’t make up for Kylo’s behaviour, he can for Ben’s. He raps on the door gently and waits for permission before entering, and half-expects not to receive it. But she responds when she hears him knocking, telling him to come in, and so he does. Then he leans against the closed door without approaching her, waiting to see what the situation is tonight.

She’s in bed, her ragged blindfold on, and she’s tucked under the covers, her hands folded in her lap.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her.

She nods. “Every time, I wonder,” she mutters. “Every time I wonder if this is going to be the final step in this dance we do. If you’ll finally run off and never come back to me at all.”

“I don’t mean to. I’m a coward—and I’m not used to this.”

“Neither am I,” she tells him crisply. “In fact, we might have the most unusual marriage in the entire world, so forgive me if I’d like you here to help me figure out what it is you actually want from me.”

“I—“ He pauses on the edge of another apology. “I don’t deserve what I want from you. I’ve told you that.”

“And I’ve told you that should be my decision to make.”

“But you can’t. Not without knowing everything. And I can’t tell you everything.”

She tilts her head. “You know, I think if you really wanted to, you’d find a way.”

His heart starts thumping against his ribs, hard enough he thinks they might bruise from the inside. Because he’s never considered it that way. He’s always found excuses to maintain the lie, always backed down from his attempts as soon as the curse rose up to thwart him. But with other things—saving her life, for a start—he’s found ways around it. 

He’s confronted with the truth: he doesn’t want her to know. Especially not now. It’s too late. At first, this had been about providing her company and friendship without the mantle of Kylo souring things between them. But he’s benefited from that as much as she had, in the sweetness of her company. And every time he’d set a boundary, he’d let it crumble, until there were none left standing.

“Maybe you’re right,” he whispers. “And I don’t know where this leaves us.”

To his surprise, she extends a hand to him, patting the space beside her for him to sit down. He shouldn’t, but this is one more boundary he’ll shove his way through in no time, so he offers it no resistance.

As soon as he’s seated, her hands are in his hair, carding through it. Gently.

“I’ve already told you plenty of times that I know you well enough to make my own judgment,” she says. “I know your soul; I’ve felt it. But more than anything, I value your company, and I wouldn’t want to lose that.”

“You won’t,” he swears.

“So your secrets make no difference to me. I want to be your wife, in all that entails. I don’t think you should deny yourself pleasure just to torture yourself.”

“Do you truly?”

“Yes.”

He curls a hand around one of her wrists, leaning into her touch. “I think it would make me feel better about everything if sometimes we just enjoyed each other’s company.”

“We can just sit and talk tonight, if you like,” she offers with a smile. 

He nods and presses a kiss to the inside of her wrist. “I’d like that very much.”

“I…I’d still like to be held,” she says tentatively. “If that’s alright with you?”

“You only have to ask,” he agrees, and she’s immediately worming her way into his arms, pressed against him in a way which feels tender and perfect, even if his body is reacting in decidedly intender ways.

That night, they do nothing but talk. Like the old days, the first nights he’d started coming to her bed. And it’s just as perfect to him as the nights when they don’t exchange a word of conversation at all.

* * *

The weeks pass, the wheel of winter rolling through the castle. It brings more frost, then snow, enough to leave drifts in the courtyard. Rey finds enough glass around the castle to fashion cloches for her garden, to keep the plants protected from the worst of the weather. When she isn’t tending to that, she’s either in the library or her chamber.

Kylo rarely sees her. He does as he promised, and waits for her in the mess hall. He’s tempted to pull the throne into here, for the sake of something to sit on, but it was never the most comfortable of seats, and it wasn’t designed for his proportions. Instead he repairs a bench and uses that to rest on.

Sometimes, she does come to him. It’s sporadic, unpredictable. They fight, she loses. She’s determined, but not as determined as he is, and for all her progress, she is still hampered by his superior skill and size. And she seems wary of getting too close, no doubt in case he says something monumentally disgusting to her. For his part, he tries to keep his mouth shut, his comments few indeed. He’s even pulling his blows, to ensure he doesn’t do her any true harm, but that doesn’t mean he’ll deliberately lose to her. Not when he needs to keep her close as long as he is able to. 

Besides, what kind of test would it be if he threw the fight in her favor? He needs to know she will be able to protect herself in the outside world, against opponents who won’t pull their blows.

Following the days they spar, the days when her outward disgust for him is tossed in his face, he only wants to be held at night. To seek comfort from her when the shame is too overwhelming for him to lose himself in her body. Sometimes she only wants to be held too, her monthly courses bringing with them discomfort that he tries to soothe with soft kisses to her temple and sweet words to help her sleep.

Other nights, she is impatient. More and more, she demands less than gentleness from him, and he refuses to provide it. Not when he is already taking more from her than he deserves. Instead he worships her with mouth and hands, showing her all the love he is too clumsy to put into words. She does not complain—he makes sure she is never left lacking as they curl up together, spent and panting, her energy taking on that lazy, satisfied edge that he knows means he’s done well.

“I wish you could stay,” she often bemoans when it’s time for him to leave her. He’s already allowing himself to stay too close to dawn, talking to her for hours after they’ve finished speaking with their bodies, and where he comes even closer to surrendering to his drowsiness in her arms. That will never do, so he lulls her to sleep instead, leaving her when she drifts off, and returning to the tower room and his lonely, cold cot.

Phasma’s expedition is taking longer than expected, but she’s sending regular reports back to Snoke, which Hux dutifully reads out in the throne room. The Nezal house in Coruscant is a wreck, but Kylo could have told them that. All the major houses in Coruscant were picked clean as soon as they were abandoned. If the Nezal family had been at all aligned with the Resistance—unlikely, given how mercenary their allegiances tended to be—there wouldn’t be anything left to show it. Paperwork would have been taken for kindling by the desperate residents of the city in the immediate aftermath of the war.

Not that this stopped Phasma from ordering the building being systematically taken apart. Upon finding nothing to tie the family to the Resistance, although plenty of hidden treasures to be added to the palace coffers, she took her retinue and headed out to the larger, rural estate near Chaaktal. There is more ground to cover there, and Kylo is sure she intends to repeat the same process she started in Coruscant. It will take some time before she admits defeat—although Kylo has other plans to cover the Tekkas’ tracks too.

It will also delay Rey’s potential victory over him even more.

He knows she’s studying battle theory in the library. He tried to teach her some, but she’s becoming more strategic in her approach to their fights. Unfortunately for her, she’s taking techniques she’s freshly learned about and practicing them against someone who’s already had plenty of real life experience with them.

His fear that he’ll lose her soon gradually ebbs. He thinks, at this rate, he will get to spend the entire winter with her. That’s a good thing; he’s not sure how well she’d survive outside the castle walls in the bitterness of this weather, caused by Snoke’s unnatural drawing from the land. He sees how the cold affects her as she moves around the draftiest parts of the castle, especially now that she refuses to wear the additional cowl he’d gifted to her. Instead she’s taken to draping a blanket around herself, and then as the days pass, she starts to fashion it into a makeshift poncho. It’s not enough, but so long as she keeps to the interior of the castle it’s not so bad.

After he wins their match three days in a row, he’s certain Rey won’t be ready for round four of defeat, and leaves the castle for a short journey of his own. He takes the Silencer from the fortress, where it’s been long neglected, and journeys out to Chaaktal himself.

Phasma is wary about his presence, but appears to find nothing suspicious when he tells her he’d followed Maz Kanata’s trail to Kuat, which isn’t very far from Chaaktal. 

“For someone so small, Kanata gets about the place,” Phasma comments drily. She’s out of her chair, propped up on polished chrome crutches, although he’s sure there’s also a back brace underneath her armor. Whether she’s actually regained the strength in her legs or is refusing to show weakness, he cannot tell.

“I’m sure the Resistance is leading me on a merry dance, now they know I’m on her trail,” he says. “But since I’m here—“

“Your presence isn’t required,” Phasma tells him stiffly. He grins under the mask, getting exactly the reaction he wanted. She wants him gone, of course, and quickly. Can’t have him stealing her praise—and she’s right to be suspicious of him for turning up.

“Then can I take your report back to the Emperor?”

“I’ll arrange for the scribe to prepare one detailing the mission so far,” she concedes.

He spends the night in the Silencer, parked on the Imperial road halfway outside Kuat waiting for the report to be completed. He’d hoped to be back at the castle before nightfall, but Phasma won’t be rushed. His dreams are fitful—Rey is in them, soft and warm, but indistinct. There’s a locket around her neck, one it takes him time to recognize as once belonging to his mother. Strange, that he should dream of it now, when he hasn’t seen it in decades, and presumes it lost among the other castle treasures. 

He’s never felt Rey’s absence more keenly than when he wakes so far from her.

The trip will be worth it. Before Phasma was aware of his arrival, he’d planted a few crucial pieces of evidence in the earth around the estate—trinkets bearing Luke’s insignia, pushed down into the dirt to make it appear they’d been here since the place was sacked. It ought to be enough to convince the court that the Nezals really had been his uncle’s followers. Hopefully it will also be sufficient to protect the Tekkas for the time being.

Dusk is already settling around the castle by the time Kylo’s returned the Silencer to the fortress, given his own report to Snoke, and then checked on Grimtaash. As he’d hoped, Rey is waiting for him in her bed, wrapped only in a sheet.

He’s barely at her side when her hands are on him, trying to reach inside his breeches. She’d find him willing and ready, but he covers her hands instead, lacing his fingers through hers. “Don’t I even get a hello?” he teases.

“Sorry,” she mutters. “I’ve been wanting you all day. I missed you last night—if you’re injured, I can heal you first?”

“There’s no need,” he tells her. “I’ve not been hurt.”

“Good.” She smiles, tugging at his hands. “Kiss me.”

“Okay.”

And he scoops her up in his arms.

It’s certainly not what she was expecting, and she lets out a shriek that would surely reach anybody else in the castle, if there were anybody else. She clamps a hand over her mouth—maybe she thinks Kylo is lurking around somewhere—and he does bark out a laugh at that.

“What if Kylo heard—“ she whispers.

“He’s not here.” Then he lies himself down on his back with Rey straddling his torso, but he still has a firm grip under her thighs. It allows him to lift her even higher, further up his body, until her legs are braced over his shoulders. The juncture of her thighs perfectly placed above his mouth.

“Ben—“

“You told me to kiss you,” he reminds her, and then he does.

She keeps one hand covering her mouth, and the other finds the solid wood of the headboard, leaning into it to keep her balance. While he’s used his mouth on her before, it’s never been like this, but he likes it—the way his entire world has narrowed to the sweeping vista of her body. She dominates his senses, her thighs muffling sound, every breath engulfed with the scent of her, taste and touch all about her too.

She’s hesitant at first, trying to keep herself propped up, so carefully. He has one hand cupped under a buttock, the other wrapped around a hip, holding her in place while letting her move. He needs her to take the lead, and as she eases into it—as he finds a rhythm she likes, she starts to move against him. Riding him, grinding over him, panting and moaning above him in ways that guide him. He’s moaning too—distant parts of his body ache for attention, but they’re nowhere near the cradle of her thighs, so he ignores them. Nothing in the world matters except her salty, musky flavor and the sounds she’s making.

Eventually, her hand falls away from her face, blindly clutching at the pillow beside his head. He’s not sure she’s looking for anything in particular, but he peels away the hand currently around her hip and lets her grip it. This time, she’s the one holding him down to the pillow, but it’s not the same thing at all—not least because he could easily free himself, if he ever found himself in the unlikely position of wanting to. But because she’s not pinning him in place—he’s her anchor. He’s her root, her connection to the earth even as her spirit spirals upwards, and though he’s happy for her to float away, he’ll be here to catch her when she needs him.

Time is meaningless, even if his jaw might protest such prolonged vigorous activity. He lets her use him until he feels the sweetness in her shift, her other hand seeking him out. When she finds his other hand lacking, she settles for his hair instead, sinking fingers into it so she can grip him firmly. She doesn’t tug, just holding him, but his body stirs with renewed interest and he’s sure she must feel the groan that rattles through his chest.

Her arousal spills over quietly, in tightening fingers and trembling thighs, in heaving breaths and pulsing hips; her energy like the sun cresting the horizon at dawn, in warmth and color and light. He lets her ride it through, keeping his mouth and tongue steady, until she lifts herself up abruptly.

She licks her lips and tries to move, ready to climb away from him, but his hands settle underneath her buttocks again, shifting her back down his torso. She leaves a gleam in her wake—he’ll smell like her until he bathes, and he’s not sure he’ll want to. Not when it feels like he’s been anointed.

The movement rouses her, and she braces herself again, arranging herself so she’s straddling his thighs this time. “Like this?” she asks him, and when she grasps him, he suddenly remembers how desperate he is for her.

“Please,” he tells her, and she doesn’t hesitate, lifting her hips only enough to take him in, then wriggling down until he’s fully inside her.

The feeling of her tight and warm around him is still a shock, still as incredible as the first time. He reaches for her hands and she obliges him, letting their clasped hands rest on his chest as she experiments with ways to move. She tries rocking, like she had their second night together, and shifting up and down. Both feel good to Kylo, and he moans his encouragement with every twist of her hips. Her face is scrunched up in concentration and he imagines if anyone could see his, it would be the same. It’s always overwhelming, like he’s in a boat on a river in full torrent, being washed at high speed towards a waterfall. It’s exhilarating and maybe even worth being dashed against the rocks at the bottom.

He lies back to enjoy the ride.

* * *

He’s settled on one of the benches, wishing he could remove his mask and get truly comfortable, when Rey arrives. He barely notices her at first; he’s concentrating on the apples he’s juggling above his head with magic, high up in the rafters. She doesn’t speak, or make a noise—she doesn’t even come inside the mess hall at first. She waits on the threshold, silently, and only the steady pulse of her energy alerts him—she’s not hiding it today.

The apples drop around him and he catches them in one fist, placing them down on the bench before they can rot to mold in his palm. Then she steps inside the hall—not striding boldly, but she’s not timid either. Walking steadily until she reaches the center of the empty space.

When she bows to him, he sees the sword in a sheath at her hip. Anakin’s sword.

“Rey—“

“Since I’m failing to win using my preferred weapon,” she interrupts before he can say anything, “I decided to try the one you’ve been so keen for me to pick up.”

He’s on his feet, but he doesn’t approach her. “We should use the practice swords. This isn’t about doing real injury to each other.”

“Isn’t it?” She stares at him steadily. “No, I want to use the real thing this time.”

He’s tempted to get a wooden sword anyway, and the only thing which persuades him to draw his real sword is the knowledge that her blade would slice through it with one good blow. He’d be weaponless, and she’d win, but it wouldn’t be a true victory on her part.

For a moment he contemplates it anyway. Getting it over with; letting her go free instead of dragging her through fight after fight. But he knows she wouldn’t accept that. She wants him to use his infamous sword—the one that’s almost as monstrous as he is—against her.

He retrieves it from where it’s been stashed against the wall. It glows faintly red, as it always does, like it had been forged with blood running through the steel. That isn’t true—instead, it had been corrupted by the magic Kylo yields. As a youth the sword had been so brilliant a silver it had almost seemed white, like it still carried the heat of the forge. It had been crafted by the same masters who’d once made Anakin’s blade, though somehow Anakin’s hadn’t become discolored. Perhaps because he’d abandoned the sword early on in place of pure, violent magic instead.

Rey stands in her opening stance. Her eyes aren’t closed—that would be foolish before any fight, even if she knows he won’t rush to attack her before they officially start like an enemy might. But they are heavy-lidded as she runs through her breathing exercises. Emptying her thoughts and centering herself. He should be proud. Instead, he’s concerned. Where has all her anger gone?

She raises the blade, both hands clasped around the hilt as she braces the sword directly in front of herself, the tip pointing towards the ceiling. She’s ready. He gets into his own stance—feet planted firmly into the floor, shoulder width apart, sword resting against his thigh in one hand only.

He sees her tactic now. Why she’s insisted on actual weapons. She’s testing him, to see if will really risk doing real damage to her with a true weapon, or whether he will flinch. 

No, damn her. It’s not a test. It’s a strategy. She’s seeing if his words are true. If his want for her runs deeper than carnality, and if he will allow himself to be beaten rather than harm her. And he knows the answer before they begin.

He knows he’s already lost her.

Still, he has to try. He has to at least pretend to put up a fight. He has to make her victory mean something, even if all he wants to do is throw himself at her mercy. He wants to get on his knees before her, wrap his arms around her legs, plead with her to stay with him—

She moves so quickly into her first swing that he almost fails to block it. And the next, and the next, and the next. Yet he does, self-preservation kicking in. Snoke won’t allow him to die like this, but nor will Kylo allow Rey to make herself a killer.

So he fights back, pushing back. He makes no moves that bring his blade anywhere near her skin, but he still has his size and strength to push her backwards. To deflect her so harshly she’s corralled back towards the stack of benches against the wall, leaving her little room to maneuver. He swings, he slashes, and she blocks but with an increasingly narrow range.

Maybe he’s not going to lose after all.

That’s when he realizes the inside of his mask is hot, wet. It’s not sweat, it’s too salty for that. This entire time, he’s been crying.

She leaps onto the benches, and he recognizes the move a second before it happens. She leaps, and uses her magic to send herself somersaulting over his head, back out into the wider space. He whirls, and now he’s the one pinned into the tight corner.

He still has brute force on his side, and she doesn’t have the advantage for long. With hard, savage thrusts, he cuts more space for himself, watching her cringe against the force of each blow. This close—every time he brings his sword down heavily on hers and she blocks it with gritted teeth, he sees her anger. It’s not her usual crackling wildfire. This time it’s the white core of the flame, close and precise and all the more dangerous for it.

He’s not expecting her next move, even though he should be. Just as she’d done with her staff a few weeks ago, she flings her sword at his legs.

His reaction is instinctive—he leaps out of the way to avoid the blade, and this sends him tumbling down. He lands on his back this time, and she wastes no time in clambering over him, pinning his torso down with her knees.

But he’s still got his sword, and she doesn’t have hers, even though his arm is trapped under her thigh, preventing him from lifting it. For good measure, he sends her sword spinning under the benches with a pulse of magic, so she can’t easily retrieve it, and she turns back from having watched it go with a snarl.

“Yield,” she commands, and he lies back, keeping his fist very tightly curled around the sword hilt. She’s a fool—anyone who really wanted to hurt her could find a way even like this. But he remembers his own tactic and decides to try it again, to see if it will unnerve her enough to yield herself.

“You even like being on top,” he tells her. And stars help him, he likes it too.

Her nostrils flare, but she doesn’t move.

“Yield,” she insists again, and he shakes his head. He can lie here all day if he needs to. This is the most pleasant end to a fight he’s ever had, all things considered.

But in the next moment, he realizes he’s underestimated her. A puff of that white fury emerges from her, practically searing his skin, and then she lifts her hands from his chest towards his throat.

At first, he thinks she’s going to wrap them around his neck, and he’s more startled than truly fearful. Rey doesn’t know how long it takes to strangle a man to kill him—she won’t succeed. She doesn’t have it in her.

Then her fingers curl under the base of his mask, brushing against his jaw, and he understands.

“Rey—“

“I’m sorry, Kylo,” she says, and she truly does sound regretful about it. “I have to do this.”

“No!” His voice is high and thready even through the mask.

But she begins to tug insistently. Even though none of his skin is bared to her yet, the prickle of pain shoots up his spine, and in the next second it doubles as the scantest sliver of his chin is revealed.

“I yield!” he yells, unclenching his fist from around the sword hilt. “I yield!”

Rey stops. She nods, and tugs the mask back into its proper place, ceasing the pain licking its way through his veins. At her nod, a tear drops from her cheek and onto his bare neck—and he’s horrified to notice that her eyes are full of them.

“Good,” she says. “I’m glad I didn’t have to do that.” And she scrambles away from him, kicking his sword out of reach. “But I won.”

He doesn't move a muscle. He can't, because if he does he'll shatter apart, starting with the hot sting in his own eyes. "You did."

He can’t look at her yet—he can’t bear the risk of seeing her triumphant. He can’t bear to look at her for the last time. Instead he stares up into the rafters, so far above but dark and heavy nonetheless. It feels like something is on his chest, crushing him.

But he promised her, didn’t he? That if she beat him, he’d let her go. And when he says the words, he needs to be looking at her, because the only thing worse than watching her leave will be missing his last chance to drink her in.

“You’re free to leave.” The words come out like he’s choking. He is.

He’s not sure what he expects her to do; perhaps turn on her heel and walk away from him immediately. Perhaps vanish before his very eyes without so much as a goodbye. But she stays where she is, hands on her hips in lieu of anything else to do with them.

She nods. “You told me when I won you’d give me anything I asked for.”

“I did.”

“Then give me Ben.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be over on [Tumblr](https://stellardarlings.tumblr.com/) and now also [Twitter](https://twitter.com/stellardarlings), with a teaser before the next chapter.


	22. Chapter Twenty-One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey knows before she’s even finished asking that Kylo will deny her request.
> 
> “You promised,” she tells him, without waiting for his response. “You said you’d give me anything I asked for.”
> 
> “I know I did,” he replies. “But this is beyond my power.”
> 
> “The hell it is!”
> 
> “Only my master has the power to release us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! I'm just going to leave this here and suggest you have some comfort food ready. 
> 
> Also, I'm considering upping the rating to an E, but not sure if people agree if the story is at an E rating. Can you let me know if you think an M rating still feels appropriate?

Rey knows before she’s even finished asking that Kylo will deny her request.

“You promised,” she tells him, without waiting for his response. “You said you’d give me anything I asked for.”

“I know I did,” he replies. “But this is beyond my power.”

“The hell it is!”

“Only my master has the power to release us.”

She’s already walking away, backing out of the mess hall with a shaking head and shaking heart. Despite that, her eyes remain stubbornly dry. “Excuses.”

“Where are you going?”

“What does it matter?”

“You can’t leave. Not until I open a portal for you.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not ready to go yet.” She pauses on the threshold, taking one last look at him. “But it won’t be long.”

He doesn’t chase her. It’s only when she’s back in her chamber that she realizes he didn’t even ask how she knew about Ben. But she doesn’t have the energy left to panic about that right now—about what he might know or what he might do to Ben in retaliation—not when every part of her feels like it’s been reduced to pulp. Her limbs burn from her fight with Kylo, but it’s nothing compared to how she feels inside, where she’s sure her body has been scooped hollow and replaced with a writhing mass of eels.

She wants to cry. She locks the chamber door behind her, sliding down its length until she’s on the ground, arms tight around her knees, her face pressed into the warmth of her thighs. She knows a hard cry would help with how wretched she feels, but she can’t summon them on command, not even knowing she’s cried more since coming to this castle than she has in her entire life.

Instead, she screws her eyes shut and tries not to replay in her mind’s eye what had just happened. Kylo below her, cocky even while pinned, until she’d started to remove his mask.

She can’t believe she’d even tried that. It hadn’t been part of the plan—she’d been sure her strategy of fighting with a real sword would win, and then when she’d started losing despite the way he was trying not to harm her, she’d grown desperate. And pinned like he was, she’d been reminded of sitting astride Phasma the same way, of how removing the other woman’s helmet had ended that fight definitively. 

Even if Rey had no intention of sinking a dagger into Kylo’s exposed neck like she’d done to Phasma, this was worse. Rey knows the harm unmasking can do now, and she’d done it anyway. She’d been ruthless enough to cause deliberate harm purely for the satisfaction of winning.

Kylo intends to honor her win for her ruthlessness, because it’s sufficient evidence to him that she’ll do whatever it takes to protect herself. Yet Rey knows that having faced such a test again, she’s not ready to be set free at all. She can’t do that, even to an enemy. Her win ought to be void on that basis alone. 

But she won’t tell Kylo that.

And she doesn’t want to leave without Ben. She can’t—she made a promise to him. A promise she has no intention of breaking, not like Kylo has just done to her.

Certain no tears are coming, Rey shields her presence, then creeps out of the room. She can’t sense Kylo, though that means nothing, not if he’s cloaked his energy as well. Though she suspects he’ll give her plenty of space today, as he has been doing for several weeks. When she wants to leave, it will be up to her to go find him and ask him to open a portal.

She ought to pack her things, but doing that would be admitting she’s leaving Ben behind, and she won’t do that. There must be a way of convincing Kylo—of finding a loophole in whatever instructions Snoke has given him in regards to Ben. Kylo’s good at loopholes.

She passes by the base of the tower steps leading up to Ben’s room, and she hesitates. Now, more than ever, she wishes she could go directly to him. Knowing he’s locked up there, that he knows so little about what happens day to day until she tells him—how is she going to break the news to him that she’s won her freedom? It feels wrong to wait until he visits her tonight, but time and again, whenever she’s tried breaching the invisible wall blocking her entry into the tower, it’s proved unyielding.

Instead, she retreats to the room she’s secreted Ben’s family portrait away in. She’s had plenty of time to work on it in the weeks since she brought it upstairs, and she’s been methodically weaving it back together with magic ever since. There’s so little of it left to finish that she resolves to finish it today. 

At least then she will finally get to see Ben’s face and experience some actual victory. This work should calm her mind and body, and give her time to work through her thoughts before night falls and she has to speak to Ben.

The portrait waits for her under a blanket, propped up in the corner of another chamber. She crosses after carefully closing the door behind her, and falls to her knees, dragging the blanket down with her. The painting is still partially slashed open, but the wound has been mostly repaired apart from the one small section she still needs to fix.

Ben’s parents stare out at her, as they always do, with emotions Rey is fully aware she’s perceiving due to her own turmoil, rather than them actually existing in paint and varnish. Today, those stares feel more reproachful than anything, and she tries to focus solely on Ben. 

At this point, he’s a cloud of dark hair around a pale face. His mouth is his most prominent feature, and knowing all the places those lips have kissed her always stir something inside Rey when she sees them. He’s clean shaven nowadays, if she can judge by touch alone, but back then he’d had facial hair surrounding his mouth, and it serves to accentuate his pout.

She only needs to repair his eyes, and then she’ll finally know what her husband really looks like.

When Kylo taught her how to put the broken castle windows back together, she’d never actually touched the glass. However, she’s discovered that this process works better if she takes the strands of canvas in her hands and presses each loose strip to an undamaged part. She works from the outside in, like stitching up a wound, and though it’s tiring work she normally finds it soothing. Today, anticipation keeps her going, even as the adrenaline of the morning ebbs away and leaves her with a tremor running through her body. 

She should stop and eat something, but that would involve going down to the kitchens, and that might mean facing Kylo. She’s not doing that yet. She can’t even think about him without thinking of their fight; of how hot he’d been when she pressed up against him, of how his chest had been too wide for her thighs. Of how he’d made that comment about her liking being on top—a comment which still makes her cheeks burn to think of it. He’d liked it too, if she’s any judge.

And stars, how she burns with shame for how she’s been feeling lately about him. She’d only gone to fight him because it was a way to prevent herself from being further drawn to him. Escaping the castle had stopped being her top priority—she couldn’t leave without breaking Ben’s curse first—but fighting Kylo had been an opportunity to take out her irrational infatuation on him directly. Ever since he’d confessed how he wants her; since he rose from his sprawled position in the throne, to tell her that he’d choose her over power.

She’d run from him then too, and it hadn’t been out of fear of him. It had been a fear of herself—of the reaction his confession had caused in her body, reactions only Ben had coaxed out of her. But where Ben is achingly soft with her, she can’t see Kylo being like that at all. Kylo would take his pleasure from her body as he saw fit—and she’d like it. Once he’d made his interest clear, it felt like the only way she could stop herself from offering him exactly what he wanted was to put distance between them.

Because there’s a power to knowing how much he wants her, in knowing what he’d give up for her, what he already has. Nobody has ever gone to such lengths for her. She shouldn’t like it, but she does, no matter how much she buries it and hides that truth from herself. 

Kylo has already done so much to protect her, to keep her alive, and he’s the closest thing to safety she’s ever known. Her parents had chosen the greater good over her, and she’d ended up orphaned in Jakku, struggling for survival. But Kylo has repeatedly gone through corporal punishment to ensure she lives and thrives, defying his master despite the costs. Even if his reasons for doing so can hardly be quantified as anything good or pure, it’s heady to live with that knowledge. He is unmatched, a pure force of unfathomable will, and he wants to give that to her.

She’d tried to convince herself that it’s not Kylo she wants—that if Ben could be persuaded to do the things she’s been envisioning, it will drive out all notion of desire for Kylo. But Ben can’t be persuaded. She’d tried to encourage him when he’d pinned her hands, had made suggestions about things she’d read—dreamed about—and he’d acted scandalized. She’d never felt more like a dirty, feral thing until he’d rejected her like that. If he was so shocked by that, how would he ever react if she told him about other—and more real—dark aspects of herself? Like how the castle talks to her about death? How she feels drawn to violence, even if it sickens her?

While she enjoys the things they do together, she’s been left wondering about Kylo more than ever—about how he would not judge her. He might even approve of the things she wants. Fighting him became the only way to work her frustrations out. 

Underneath it all, she knows that if she hadn’t met Ben, she’d have given Kylo what he wants a long time ago. Her guilt stems not from wanting the monster, but from what the man she loves might think of her.

Rey has one of the portrait’s eyes finished now, and her chest tightens as she stares at it. The artist really had been a master, which she supposes makes sense if he was working on royal portraits. Ben’s singular eye is a warm brown, lighter on the outside of the iris than in the center, framed by long lashes. It’s beautiful, and only encourages Rey to work faster.

She knows what Ben will tell her tonight. That she should take the opportunity and leave; that he always knew she wouldn’t be able to find a way out of here for him as well, and he won’t blame her for her failure. For that reason, it’s so tempting to ignore telling him at all, to keep up a ruse for a few days while she soaks in as much of his presence as she can, while she works on breaking Kylo. That thought gives her another idea. 

What if…what if she made Kylo an offer? Gave him what he wants in exchange for Ben? 

If, specifically, she gave herself to Kylo for Ben’s freedom? 

The castle isn’t too terrible of a home, and she knows Kylo will protect her. He certainly won’t do her any real harm. She’s never been punished by him—not like Ben, every time he returns from the fortress with fresh wounds striping his back, just like Kylo himself.

That fills her with a new kind of energy. Her fingers twist and loop the canvas frantically, smoothing it into place as quickly as she can. The paint ripples as she works, bubbling back into the original brushstrokes, and soon the final section of the painting emerges.

Rey can see Ben’s face. Whole.

Now she’s able to see how young he truly was—on the cusp of manhood, perhaps no older than she is. For all the times he’d made comments about his face, and how lucky she’s been not to see it, she does cry now at being able to drink it in. She was struggling to cry before, but seeing Ben’s face unstoppers her emotions and lets them flow. 

He’s truly a blend of his parents, his youth showing a little awkwardly in his features, but there’s the promise of real charm to him. She can only imagine what he looks like now, with that promise fulfilled.

But on the second glance—the second glance sends a chill through her. Because she knows these eyes, and that heavy brow. She’s seen them before, and they’re so instantly associated with a moment of adrenaline that it doesn’t take much searching in her memory to place them. They’d hunted her, once, when she’d tried to escape from Snoke’s fortress, the rest of the face hidden behind a black kerchief. But there’s no mistaking those eyes, or even that lustrous hair now she puts them together.

Oh.

Oh, she’s been such a fool.

Bile rises in her throat, hot and sharp, and she crawls away from the portrait on her hands and knees.

She doesn’t look back at it, and by the time she’s out of the room she’s half-convinced herself she’s imagining things. She’s only seen Kylo’s eyes once, in darkness. She’s wrong; it’s only her own addled lust for Kylo, and the accompanying guilt, which is making the link between the two men. Ben is Kylo’s prisoner.

Yet the more she thinks about things, the more she begins to doubt herself. The more she starts to make connections. She rests on her knees at the base of the tower staircase and sifts through everything she knows.

Ben is a prisoner, like Kylo, but so often Ben has suggested that Snoke is the one keeping him prisoner—he’d once told her that Snoke is his master. So has Kylo. Kylo supposedly grew up in the castle at the same time as Ben. Whenever Ben is injured from a punishment, Kylo usually shows signs of injury too.

Both men have magical ability, even if they don’t feel the same way to her, and neither can show their face to her. The only difference is that Kylo hides his behind a mask. And now that she thinks about it, perhaps it’s the mask which hides his true energy from her. Finally, Ben himself has insisted that he’s done things she’d hate him for.

If Ben is Kylo—if Kylo is Ben—then it’s true she would hate him. But not for the reasons he thinks.

If it’s true, it would mean that when Kylo Ren killed Han Solo, it was actually Ben slaughtering his own father. That thought has the bile surging anew, and Rey only just contains it. It also means Ben has been lying to her for months. He could have found a way to tell her who he really was, and he chose not to. The first person Rey has ever loved, the only person in the world she has ever felt connected to, is also capable of killing their own father and making her live out a lie. He told her he loved her, and made vows to her, and now she doesn’t know what any of it means. What game he is playing with her.

She doesn’t know what that means for her.

That she’s pathetic, maybe.

No. She has to stop spiraling. She won’t think about the implications—about their marriage, about his potential lies—until she’s confirmed it.

But how does she do that?

The most obvious thing is to ask, yet can she even trust him to tell her the truth now?

She wishes she could get into his tower. Despite the pain it would cause him, she would be able to see that Ben is up there, with no mask in sight, while Kylo remains downstairs waiting for her. She would be able to cast her fears aside.

Instead, she retreats into her chamber, where she starts to gather things together that she might want to take with her. Not that she’s committed to leaving but if it’s true…if it’s all true, how can she stay here?

There isn’t much she intends to take. Some clothes and some food, though she takes the opportunity to nibble on some of her stash now. She can always get more from the pantry later. Her staff, obviously, and the sword in its scabbard. If she takes any more than this, it will only slow her down. But she’ll also need to take the jewels she collected from the room in the dungeons, which will work as well as coins to pay her way. 

Not that she knows what her way is—where exactly is she supposed to go from here? She can try to get to Naboo, but even with magic to help and guide her that seems unlikely. “Going to Naboo” had been shorthand in Jakku for a fool’s errand, or a guaranteed death.

Maybe—maybe she can search for the Resistance. If Maz was a member, they must still be out there. They might be able to help her get to Naboo. Because staying in the kingdom seems out of the question; she can’t hide herself forever. Not without paperwork, which she still sorely lacks. But the Resistance...they owe her for everything they’ve done to her—or rather, what they haven’t done.

She wraps all her possessions into a blanket, which she fashions into a knapsack, then stashes it in one of the trunks. There’s no need to alarm Ben with her packed belongings when he arrives. She leaves her weapons lying on top of another chest, and it’s only when she’s tucking the sack away that she finds the trinket from before: the one with the locket she’s taken to wearing around her neck—the one with Ben’s baby hair in it.

She tucks it in with the other things, even though she doesn’t feel like she has any right to it. Surely this belonged to his mother, and though Rey may technically be his wife, it’s not the same at all. She shouldn’t take anything from the castle that doesn’t truly belong to her, no matter what their marriage might entitle her to.

That makes her freeze. Entitle. She’s entitled by marriage. And oh. That’s it, isn’t it? 

This trinket hadn't opened for her at first, but it had after she'd exchanged vows with Ben. It recognized her as his wife, like all the magic in this castle. Ben had told her that, hadn’t he? That the castle’s magic responded to royalty, through blood or through marriage. 

Kylo had told her something similar. That the portals—magic that must have been designed for the royal family—now only responded to him. At the time she’d assumed that by keeping Ben prisoner, Kylo had taken over that right, the same way he’d assumed ownership and control of the library.

Rey screws her eyes closed, as if somehow that will stop her from seeing these connections and let her deny what is in front of her, as plain as her own nose.

But if it’s all true—maybe the portals will open for her. And if they do, maybe she can get up into Ben’s tower room after all.

It would be a good test of her new theory, but dusk has already settled around the castle, and she runs the risk of walking directly into Ben on his way to see her. And despite everything, she wants to deny it. She wants for her husband to come to her, as he does every night, and she wants to be blindfolded when he does. She wants to feel his skin against hers, and for all the world outside their bed to melt away.

So she goes about her normal routine. She washes, and she gets into her evening garments, and she binds her eyes, as if nothing has changed. As if the core of her world isn’t quaking, ready to come apart completely and leave only ruins in its wake. Then she climbs into her bed, and she calls out to him with her mind.

Ben arrives almost immediately, eager, as if he was close by and waiting for a sign to come to her. As soon as his presence brushes up against the edges of her energy it soothes her. It reassures her. She’s wrong—this man, this good, kind man, with his wonderful, gentle soul, is nothing like Kylo. Kylo is all ragged heat, hard to sustain any kind of connection with even if she’s got used to his presence after all these months. Ben is warm but smooth, like a hot bath, an inviting presence.

She has a moment to wonder if he’s not going to be interested in sex tonight; if he’s going to want to hold her and whisper sweet things to her instead. But she doesn’t want that, not right away. She wants to feel him against her, to reassure herself of how good he really is, of what it’s like when they come together.

“Rey?” he asks tentatively, and she instinctively knows his mood leans towards softness and sweetness. Not what she’s yearning for.

“Husband,” she says in greeting. A word she hasn’t much used around him—his name before, always his name, but now it feels like she’ll stumble and fall over the word if she tries to use it. “I’ve been waiting for you.” And because she thinks her best chance of getting what she wants is to, finally, be direct and ask for it, she does. “I want to try something.”

“What is it?” he takes her hands, kisses the backs of them, and she remembers that soft and sweet has been wonderful so far. 

“I want—“ She licks her lips, then kneels up to press a kiss to his mouth. To bathe herself in that soothing aura, and his scent, and remember how much she wants him. “I want you to take control. I want you to stop holding back, and take exactly what you want from me.”

“Rey—“

She covers his mouth with her hand, before he can protest. “Please. After today, I need to think of nothing except you. I need you to drive all my thoughts away.”

He doesn’t ask her what happened today, or why she doesn’t want to think about it. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

She presses her forehead against his, feels his shaky breath gust across her skin. “You won’t. You’ve been holding back because you only want to please me, haven’t you? But this will please me too.”

He’s silent for a long moment, and she wonders if she’s gone too far. Revealed herself. But then— “You have to tell me if it’s too much.”

“I will.”

His hand curls around her hip. “Promise me.”

“I promise,” she breathes into his mouth, before he claims her for another kiss.

The kiss is different. She’s felt this edge to him before when his control had begun to fray when they first started kissing, but that was always when he was holding back from the kiss becoming something more. They’ve crossed that bridge, but now he’s devouring her, kissing her until her lungs burn and her head spins. His hand is around her throat, keeping her in place, so she can’t move or take control herself; she just has to accept the kiss, and his mouth, and tongue, and even the way his teeth occasionally scrape across her lips.

He’s barely touched her, and her thighs are already slick, her body ready for him.

He pulls away to issue a command. “Take it all off.”

Rey doesn’t need telling twice—although she takes a creative interpretation, reaching for the hemline of his tunic to tug it upwards, trailing her fingers across the defined ridges of his abdomen in the process. Testing his promise to control her.

“You know that’s not what I meant,” he says, his voice low and stern. She smiles, biting her lip, and keeps going, shucking the fabric upwards until she’s able to pull it over his head and toss it away. 

“Maybe you need to be clearer when you give me orders.” Her hands are at his waist again, tugging his pants down over his hips, when he grabs for her. 

“Stop,” he tells her, guiding her hands across to the tunic she’s taken to sleeping in. “Take this off.”

She does with no finesse, letting it sail across the room to join his. And then she feels his fingers digging into the seam of her breastband, pulling hard.

“What are you—oh!”

It rips, falling from her skin and into his waiting hands. “You have thirty seconds to take the rest off or I’ll tear it from you as well.”

It’s not as though Rey has much clothing left on her anyway, and that quickly joins the pile on the floor. Then his fingers are testing her, his mouth on her neck, sucking harder than he’s ever dared. 

When his hand comes away dripping, he pulls his mouth free to mutter against her skin. “You really do like this, don’t you?”

“Mmm.” It’s all she can manage as his mouth drifts lower, meeting her breast with hard sucks and soft grazes with his teeth. She squeaks a little at the pressure, but when he tries to pull away her hand is firm on the back of his neck keeping him in place.

“I thought I was supposed to be in charge here.”

In response, her fingers slide into his hair, curling around the roots and giving a sharp tug. She feels his hot gasp as much as she hears it, and then he nuzzles into her. 

“Do that again,” he insists.

So she does.

If she’d known all this time that he liked that so much, she’d have been doing it along. It’s like something has switched inside him—she’s not even sure his pants are fully pulled down before he’s turning her around, guiding her to grasp the headboard with firm, insistent hands. Like when she’d ridden his face, only this time he’s not below her. He’s behind her. As it sinks in that he intends to take her like this, just like she’d once asked him to, her body thrums with anticipation.

He positions her exactly as he wants her—shoulders low, knees directly below her hips, spread just wide enough to accommodate him.

“Keep your hands on the wood,” he instructs her. “If you let go, I stop.”

She nods eagerly, and then he’s pushing inside her without further preamble. He doesn’t stop until his hips are flush with her rear, and she’s whining, toes curling at the sensation. He seems so much bigger this way—she’s not sure if it’s the position, or the fact that he’s not prepared her with his fingers like he normally would. Whichever, it feels like he’s lodged somewhere deep in her belly.

And that’s before he begins to move.

Rey’s never fully appreciated how much power he has in his hips, his thighs, until he starts thrusting. The third stroke is hard enough to send her sliding across the mattress, but with a firm arm around her waist he drags her back to where she began. His hips start snapping faster, and she digs her fingers into the headboard until her knuckles turn white, her nails carving tiny crescent moons into the wood.

He’s dropped down so that his belly is resting on her lower back, his arm coming to drape alongside hers so he can cover one of her hands with his. It’s like he’s bracing the pair of them, and she needs it, because she doesn’t have the strength to do it herself. Every grunt he makes vibrates through his chest and into her back, and only the sheen of sweat between them stops the friction from being uncomfortable. The sounds, the heat of their skin, the pure energy of their movements, reminds her of all the fighting she’s done with Kylo. But this isn’t fighting at all.

“Do you need me to stop?” he moans into her hair, though he doesn’t slow down at all. She frantically shakes her head, and then realizes she never stopped whining from that first moment. 

“No,” she gasps out. “Don’t you dare.” She thinks her toes are cramping with how tightly she has them curled. With every thrust, something smacks against the point where her pleasure is usually focused. The sound is like a metronome, skin on skin a beat of its own, and it’s like a clock ticking down to her orgasm. Even without being touched there directly, the sensation begins to coil tighter and tighter.

His mouth moves again, sliding closer to her ear. So his words, soft and gruff at the same time, are breathed directly into her. “I knew you were lying about seeing this in your books. I’ve read them too—this is all you. Asking me to commit sin like this; to take you like an animal. But stars, how I’ve wanted to. Haven’t been able to think of anything else but you underneath me. Getting fucked hard and taking me so well.”

Rey thinks she whimpers in response. There’s fleeting embarrassment at being called on her lie, but he hardly seems to care about it. She likes hearing what he’s thinking, even if she never expected him to be so crude.

Normally, the sensations are centered in one or two places; inside and out. But right now, it’s so overwhelming that it’s as though her entire pelvis is a cradle for pleasure—there’s too much of it to contain in one place, so it’s had to expand outwards, even spreading across the rest of her body to make every nerve-ending taut and overwhelmed. When there’s nowhere else for it to go, it explodes, her body tightening around Ben while her spirit bursts into burning, glittering stardust.

Despite her grip on the headboard, she doesn’t have the energy to hold herself up anymore. She sags down, panting, letting the pillows swallow her up.

“Good girl,” Ben says to her, pressing kisses to her temple. But he isn’t done. 

He pulls her free of the headboard, shifting both of them to press her down flat against the pillows, so she’s on her belly. Then he crowds into her, resting across her back once more and only barely propping himself onto his elbows to keep his full weight off of her. He’s still deep this way, but the thrusts turn into a grinding motion, and since she doesn’t have anything else to hold onto, she digs her fingers into the blankets instead.

“Still good?” he pants, and she wriggles beneath him, trying to get the leverage to push back, to contribute to the rhythm.

“More. Stop asking—just take.”

He has the audacity to chuckle, and she feels that, feels the way his abdomen tenses against her back as he does it. She’s not sure who’s behind her anymore. Ben. Kylo. Both. She lets go of the blanket to search for him with one hand, to find his hair again and tug at it, hard.

He’s not laughing anymore.

The grinding stops, and he’s driving into her with his full body weight, and there’s nothing Rey can do except lie there and take it. Not that she wants to do anything else, but she’s not sure she’s going to survive this either. She thinks she might be drooling; she knows she’s still got hold of his hair and hasn’t let go.

He finishes first, though they’re so close together at this point that it barely matters whose pleasure it is. He lights up like gunpowder, and she’s swept along with it, scattering across the sky too. Not that he seems to accept that; he’s barely finished grunting archaic curses into her neck before he’s pulling out, rolling her onto her back to touch her between her legs.

“Ah, Ben!” she protests, grabbing his wrist, but she’s told him to take without asking and now he demands her pleasure again. It only takes a few quick rolls of his fingers and she’s coming again, clenching around nothing but his spend, digging sickle shapes into his arm.

The world comes back to her in fits and starts—even her ears seem to be ringing, but she can hear Ben panting above her. His energy has shifted, the chaotic edge that seemed to come over him ebbing away to his normal soothing warmth.

She’s already in his arms when the bright light fades from behind her eyes—he’s nestling them back into the pillows with her cushioned against him. He smoothes her hair back from her face, then holds her still so he can kiss her again. Soft, this time. Just his lips grazing against hers.

“Was that alright?” he asks, and it’s tentative, even though she knows he liked it as much as she did.

“It was perfect.” And he’d done exactly what she’d asked for. She’d thought of nothing when he was inside her, except for the fact that he was inside her. Already, the fear and doubt of the day is coming back, creeping through her body like ivy, ready to smother everything else. “Stay.”

“Rey—“

“Please. I want to be held; just for tonight. I’ll keep the blindfold on all night and you can leave at dawn.”

She can tell he’s too tired to protest it properly; he feels so drowsy, his energy dim and soft. But the way she’s curled up against him must be another incentive, her face tucked into the nook between his shoulder and chest, her hand splayed across his abdomen, the rest of her pressed against the side of his body. She doesn’t want to move, and she knows he doesn’t want her to move either. She runs her fingers up and down his abdomen, gently, rhythmically, and feels his arm tighten around her. If she wants any chance of sneaking into his tower, she needs this to work.

“Okay,” he says, tugging her in even closer, so she’s lying against him properly. His other arm comes up to encircle her, keeping her caught in his embrace, and she feels his lips brush against her forehead. “For tonight.”

He doesn’t say another word, and she doesn’t have anything more to say either. She wants him asleep, has no desire to disturb him, and is happy to be lulled into half-slumber along with him.

Like this, she can feel his mind. She doesn’t mean to, but in sleep—in a sleep he’s fallen into so easily—it isn’t shut up tight against her. Instead, it’s like a candle in a window in her mind’s eye, or a bright star in a dark sky. It beckons to her, urging her closer, but she resists. She’s sure she’d find the answers she wants that way, but breaching his mind like this feels like a step too far. Especially if she turns out to be wrong.

She waits until his breathing is deep and even, and touches the edge of his mind enough to know that he’s completely out, oblivious to the world around him. Then, gently, she untangles herself from his body. It’s easier said than done—he seems to wriggle closer to her for every inch of space she puts between them, and only by giving him a pillow to hold does she feel sure he won’t notice her missing. Not immediately.

The tricky part is finding her way into the refresher without being able to see anything, but fortunately there’s a clear path between her bed and the door. Once inside, she unwinds her blindfold, wrapping it back up around her lower arm, and goes to the little pile of clothes she left in here earlier. She dresses as quietly as she can, throwing on a tunic and leggings, as well as her boots, and wrapping herself up in his old cowl given the late hour. And, for the first time in a long time, she ties her hair up. 

For months, she’s only been catching the top part in a knot at the back of her head, letting the rest fall around her neck. But tonight, she finds her hands moving with muscle memory, scooping it all up and separating it into three knots. Then she creeps out of the room without looking at the bed, keeping her gaze fixed on the chamber door the entire time until she’s out in the passageway beyond.

It’s cold, and she shivers into the cowl. She pauses on the threshold for a moment, taking deep breaths while she thinks about what she’s about to do. Can she really do this? Does she want to?

She must. Or it will eat her up. She feels sick not trusting Ben, but she will never be able to move past this until she knows for certain.

When she reaches the bottom of the tower staircase, she cautiously puts her left foot on the last step. 

Nothing blocks her way.

Maybe it’s only because this portal is left open at night by the castle—because if it wasn’t, Ben would never have been able to come to her. And she’s certainly not using any magic to open anything up at the moment.

Her right foot moves to the next step, and slowly she makes her way up the stairs, her breath tight in her chest the entire way.

The room at the top is larger than she expected, although maybe the effect is amplified by how empty it is. There’s little of the furniture that had been left behind in the chamber where she sleeps—and that realization is another little piece of evidence. Because why would Ben’s room be the only one not ransacked in the entire castle? Except.

Except.

There are no drapes covering the windows, and at first her attention is drawn to them and their views across the kingdom. That’s the benefit of a tower like this, she supposes; there’s nothing blocking the view in any direction. On one side, the plains and the city. On the other side, foothills and moorland. The moon hangs full and bright, throwing the contents of the room into stark relief, everything either shadow or light.

There’s a cot on the ground, and it’s not as though Rey was expecting much in the way of luxury for Ben. But the only other piece of furniture is a chest on a nearby wall, and it’s when she sees what rests on top of it that the last of Rey’s denial burns away, flash-fried into a cinder in the quickened heat of her anger.

Three things. Three items which make it clear that Kylo Ren and Ben Solo are one and the same, and that the man she calls her husband is also her captor. 

First, there is Kylo’s armor, neatly folded and piled in place. Second, there is Kylo’s sword, the only item in the room which shows a hint of color, glowing faintly red despite the bone-white glow of the moon. 

Third, with that stark light glinting off the chrome and deepening the black, is Kylo’s mask.

There’s a moment—a long moment, which she thinks might have lasted beyond the dawn, beyond the death of the entire world—where her entire existence narrows down to the heavy, loud beat of her pulse in her ears. There’s only that sound and the mask, seemingly grinning at her from its place even though it has no expression at all. It never has. It’s never revealed; only ever hidden things from her. It’s concealed the truth and more.

Rey turns and walks away. She’s halfway down the stairs before it hits her, like somebody has physically punched her in the ribs—she can’t find her breath, can’t see anything except for the shining white heat of her anger. And there’s a heavy weight in her hands, which she only processes as the mask when she steps back inside the bedchamber. Then she remembers that Ben is still sleeping—and his face is uncovered. It must be, because she’s holding the mask.

She swallows, pressing her eyes closed. Behind her eyelids, the sweet boy in the portrait she’d seen this afternoon waits. Young and a little lost, flanked by parents who loved him a great deal. Before he ran his father through with a sword and sent his mother into exile.

She shouldn’t. She really shouldn’t. But this might be her only chance.

Rey steps towards the bed, eyes open, and turns her gaze on her husband.

In sleep, he looks young even still. His skin is paler than hers—as pale as the shining moon—except for the dark clusters scattered across it, and it only makes his hair look even blacker in comparison. She can’t see his eyes, but his nose is prominent, his lashes long enough to cast shadows on sharp cheekbones, and his mouth is full, pink. She remembers the way it had felt against her skin not even an hour ago and a shiver runs through her despite everything.

But even this short look at him is having an effect. He trembles, twitches, and then sits abruptly awake, hand rising to his throat like he’s choking.

She takes a step back, not realizing she’d come so close as to loom over him. And that movement draws his attention to her, two wide, dark eyes snapping to her, brows lifting in shock as he takes in the mask in her grasp. His mouth trembles as he tries to say her name.

“It hurts, doesn’t it?” she says. “Being betrayed by someone you thought you could trust.”

He lurches from the bed, reaching for the mask, and she steps back again, colliding with the chest where her sword rests. She grabs for it, sliding it free of the scabbard in one swift movement even as Ben’s—Kylo’s—hand closes around the mask and pulls it from her grasp. Desperation makes him strong enough to manage it, and when her fingers close around the hilt of the sword, she feels the cold magic from the dungeons pouring through her.

_ Kill him. _

She won’t. Not even with that wraith whispering in her ear. But she’ll do as good as—she slices through the air with a scream, letting the momentum drive the blade downwards, into the mask. Knocking it from Kylo’s grasp and down into the ground, where it splinters into pieces.

“Does that break your curse?” she yells, and she’s horrified to discover underneath everything that there’s still a tiny flame of hope. She  _ wants _ destroying the mask to break the curse, even now.

It doesn’t.

He’s screaming too, on his knees, and when she looks up, she sees why. It’s not just the curse—she caught him with the tip of the sword, and now his face has a livid, red wound from his forehead, scything down over one eye, and along his cheek. That lovely face—those lovely eyes—marred by her weapon. And because he’s undressed, the wound even travels down as far as his collarbone.

She could heal it. It would take hardly any effort from her, as she watches the blood well up from the cut and start to ooze across his pallid skin. But that would take tenderness she no longer holds for him. The anger within her is a poison that won’t allow for healing—not his, not hers.

She reaches into the trunk, grabbing the knapsack she’d stashed there, and retrieves her staff for good measure, slinging it onto her back. The sword, she keeps in her hand, even though Kylo is still on his knees, staring up at her with those beautiful eyes.

Rey turns her back, touching the wall to find the place where they’d first entered the castle from the tunnels.

“Did you know?” she asks him as she feels it, that ancient magic in the stones. She’d hunted for it for so long, and it was there all this time. Hidden from her because of who she was. Who she had yet to become.

Kylo makes a noise, but it’s not a real reply to her question. It’s a strange, half-choked sound that she thinks might be sobbing.

“Did you realize that when I became your wife the portals would open to me?”

The frantic spark in his eyes confirms he didn’t; that he’s only just getting the implication now. The castle responds to royalty; by blood, or by marriage. He rises but he’s too slow, hobbled by the pain. The stones have peeled away, reassembling themselves into a space Rey can step through. And she does.

“No!” he shouts, lunging after her, but she’s faster, already beginning her descent down the steps on the other side. Her only regret is that she didn’t have time to close the portal and slow him down, but she’s more limber than him. She casts a light to show her the way, and it’s only when she reaches the bottom of the stairs that she hesitates. The passage forks, and she doesn’t remember which way they came.

It gives him enough time to grab her, his fingers closing around her shoulder. She shrugs him away and chooses the right hand passage, hoping she’s right.

“Rey—“

Now he’s caught up, he has the advantage again, even injured as he is, his long legs eating up the ground between them. His arm snakes around her waist, tugging her into him just like he had before, lifting her off her feet even as she kicks and writhes. He’s hot and sticky—sweat and blood, and she can feel them both soaking into her.

“Stop this,” he commands. “I can explain—“

“I don’t want anything else from you!” She claws at his arm, but this pain must be nothing compared to everything else he’s felt in the last five minutes. She supposes, at least like this, she can’t see his face and that’s not hurting him at this exact moment.

“I tried to tell you but I couldn’t. You knew there was more.”

“You killed your own father!” She still has the sword in one hand, but she’s not going to stab him, any more than he was ever going to stab her when she challenged him to fight with real blades. “Let me go—you already said I’d won my freedom.”

“I will, I swear. Just let me explain. Please, come back to the castle, and I’ll tell you everything, as best I can. Then you can go.”

He releases his grip, just enough for her to turn around in his arms. Up close, the wound is awful, but not as awful as the look in his eyes. The despair. His face is wet with tears, contorted in pain, but if her staring at him so mercilessly is agony, he doesn’t turn away from it. 

She could go back with him, and listen to his explanations. For marrying her, for bedding her. For letting her fall in love with Ben Solo even though he doesn’t exist anymore. 

She doesn’t believe his promise to let her go.

“No,” she tells him, pushing back against his grasp. “Let me go. Now.”

He doesn’t, of course, and in his determination she’s no match for him in strength. At least not with her body.

But he’s taught her so much over the last few months. How strong she can be, and how to use everything available to her. And now she knows the castle responds to her, just as much as it responds to him.

So she calls on the castle to help her. The bedrock shakes around them, and Kylo releases his grip on her instantly, throwing his hands out against the passage walls as if to steady them. She’s ready, darting out of his reach and continuing her run through the passage. But he follows her, persistent. 

“Rey, the world isn’t safe for you out there. I can send you to somewhere that will be.”

She ignores him, spying the next fork up ahead, and she opens herself up to the castle.  _ Which way? _ Instinct, or the castle, or some combination, guides her to the left.

He catches up with her again, this time his hand closing hard around her upper arm, and when she instinctively whirls around with the sword aloft, he pushes back against it with magic. She grits her teeth, shoving at him with her own.

He goes flying, colliding with the wall of the tunnel and sliding down until he hits the ground. He’s dazed, but not unconscious, and even then he keeps coming, crawling towards her when she doesn’t immediately take off.

“ _ Stop! _ ” she screams at him. 

He doesn’t.

He looks so wretched like this—skin and hair soaked with his own blood, a fresh mask of its own. His body covered in scrapes and grime. But he keeps coming, no matter how broken he is, because he’s Kylo Ren. He’s never been defeated. She’s seen him in a fight, and how persistent he is even in pain. She’s seen him behead a man even with a dagger buried in his own thigh; no wound, no amount of pain, will stop him. He’ll keep following her, no matter what.

“I love you,” he tells her, and the words slur in his mouth.

The castle sings to her.  _ Death _ , it promises.

She screams again, wordless this time, and she raises her free hand to claw at the air. The castle responds, the tunnel shaking around them, and then stones begin to tumble from the roof. 

Ben—Kylo—is back on his feet, and she panics. Was it only earlier today that she felt desire to be chosen above everything else? But here he is. Choosing her above everything: power. The truth. The right choice.

It’s terrifying.

Rey does the only thing she can think of to stop him from coming after her. She yanks at the tunnel with her magic, pulling it down around him.

It’s not immediate, and she’s thankful for that, as she backs away. It gives him enough time to throw up a shield to protect himself from the worst of it, as the tunnel collapses upon him. But then she turns around and runs, not able to watch as the man she thought she loved is buried beneath the rubble.

It doesn’t take long for her to reach the end of the tunnel, and she collapses against the wall at the end, pushing everything she has into the portal so it will open around her. For a moment, she has a horrible realization that she doesn’t know where she’s going to end up. She might be about to step right into the fortress without protection against Snoke.

But that’s not where she finds herself. It’s a cellar, and when she climbs the steps out of it, she emerges in a small yard enclosed by a cluster of small buildings. There’s hay on the ground, and a hen-house, and the familiar scent of horse manure, the same kind Kylo brought for her garden.

The thought of him stings her eyes, but she bites her lower lip to force the emotion back. She doesn’t have time for that. Instead, she sheathes the sword, but pulls her staff free, taking in her surroundings warily. It’s still night, the moon fat and ghostly high above. Wherever she’s emerged is on lower ground, because off to one side she can see the castle hillside looming up above, and the castle itself squatting on top.

She turns her back on it. It might have served her well as a home for the past few months, but it’s closed to her now. Time to move on.

When she turns around, there’s a man there. Sat on the stoop of a house, a pipe clenched between his teeth, his wrinkles deep and his eyes kind.

“Welcome to Tekka’s Livery,” he says to her around the pipe. Now Rey understands where she is—these are stables. But not the stables at the fortress. They must be in the city.

“You don’t seem surprised to see me,” she replies.

He removes the pipe, tapping it against the step. “Not at all. We’ve been expecting you.” He smiles, and though Rey knows better than to trust strangers—to trust anybody, even the man who’d exchanged marriage vows with her—she does. “I’m Lor San.”

“I’m Rey.”

He nods, like her name is no surprise to him either. “Come inside,” he instructs. “We’ve warmer clothes for you, and food.”

“I’m alright—“ she says, but she isn’t. Now that she’s finished running, and the sweat has started to cool on her skin, she’s shivering. It is cold—frost glitters on many surfaces.

“Or if you won’t come inside, my daughter will bring out what you need. For your journey.”

“My journey?”

“Yes. We can help you get where you need to go.”

“Naboo? You can get me to Naboo?”

“No, my dear. To the Resistance.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the wise words of Ms Florence Welch: It's always darkest before the dawn.
> 
> Come yell at me on [Tumblr](https://stellardarlings.tumblr.com) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/stellardarlings). Or just in the comments.


	23. Chapter Twenty-Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo feels nothing for a long time but the cold. 
> 
> Perhaps that's a blessing, because when feeling does return, it brings with it only misery. There’s not a part of his body which doesn’t ache. Even his lungs feel like they’ve been flayed open, raw and tender every time he breathes. It’s probably from the cold air, but it hardly encourages him to keep breathing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I'd say welcome back, but let's be real, after what happened last time, this chapter is just the Kylo Ren Pain Train. It's much briefer than a lot of chapters but it's still not exactly short.
> 
> So here's the deal: I'm moving house at the end of the month. In order to not run the risk of posting late, I'm shaking my schedule up a little. This means chapter 23 will be posted next week (Saturday 20th Feb) and then we'll go back to the two week breaks. Sound good? Okay, hope you're ready for ~5k of angst.
> 
> Content warning: mentions of injuries and fever. The worst is Kylo's sword-wound, which matches the wound Rey gives him in canon.

Kylo feels nothing for a long time but the cold. 

Perhaps that's a blessing, because when feeling does return, it brings with it only misery. There’s not a part of his body which doesn’t ache. Even his lungs feel like they’ve been flayed open, raw and tender every time he breathes. It’s probably from the cold air, but it hardly encourages him to keep breathing.

He’s pinned down, not that he gives movement much of a try, because that hurts too. Instead, he tries to embrace the weight pressing down on him, accepting it as a kind of cold comfort. There’s no point fighting; easier to lie here and wait for the inevitable.

Yet the longer he lies, twisted onto his side and trapped between broken stones, eyes screwed shut, the further away unconsciousness seems to retreat. He tries to chase it down, but he’s not fast enough for that, and instead he’s left to deal with the reckoning in his head.

_ Rey… _

No. Better that he catalog the aches and pains, tallies them up and lets them overwhelm him. From his toes upwards—one leg is numb, but not in a comfortable way. It’s already reached the spitting discomfort of pins and needles, but he can barely shift to get the circulation back. Besides, he’s sure he’s broken his big toe, so wriggling his foot only sends a hot spike of pain lancing through him.

As for the other leg, it’s sticky with blood. It got scraped up badly when he was flung against the wall, and then he landed directly on that knee, which feels three times larger than it ought to be.

He can’t decide whether his torso is one big bruise or a patchwork of them, and no matter where he shifts his weight, he’s lying on cuts and grazes. And then there’s the pulsing heat of his sword-wound, which is one open, angry nerve-ending from his brow, down over his cheek, and across his collarbone. That eye has swollen shut, and he’s lucky she missed the artery in his neck.

Lucky. That’s the word. It would have been better for both of them if she’d finished the job.

With the reminder—with the acknowledgment of the mark she’d scythed into him—Kylo cannot keep her out of his thoughts anymore.

He’s earned this. She’s buried him beneath his own castle and left him for dead, exactly as she should have done. Not only for the lies, but for the way he’d allowed himself to be tempted into taking what he wanted from her. 

He should have insisted she left the castle as soon as she’d beaten him. He should have told her Ben cannot be freed, and put her straight into a boat headed to Naboo, and been done with it. Instead he’d gone to her chamber hoping for at least one more night with her, a desperate supplicant ready to give her anything she asked for if only he could touch her skin.

He can still taste her.

The way she’d looked at him, when she’d found out. The disgust. Anger. Pain.

The same pain he’d seen from his mother, before she’d shot him in the side with a crossbow.

Then there was Rey’s fear when he’d followed her, pursuing her until he’d pushed her far enough to bring the tunnel down on his head. He’s not sure he’ll ever get the look in her eyes when he’d told her that he loved her out of his memory—the roar which had burst from her chest and throat as she pulled the tunnel crashing around him. Her magic had felt as ragged and unstable as his own then, just for a moment.

He hadn’t deserved being shot with his mother’s crossbow, even though he understands why Leia had done it. She didn’t know he’d been compelled to do what he did, that he’d fought against Snoke’s order even as the sword had bitten into the flesh of his father’s stomach and kept going. She’d been fighting for her own life and for the protection of the kingdom.

But this? Kylo deserved this. Everything he’d done with Rey had been borne from his own desire, and he’d earned every drop of her rage and rejection.

Something licks a wet stripe across his bare foot, and he screams. The sound is hoarse and raw, a deep note echoing around the collapsed tunnel, but it’s a scream nonetheless. He kicks his foot, hoping to discourage whatever it is—a rat, at best—

And hears a disgruntled mew in response. 

“BB-8?” 

Stars, his voice really is ruined. He’d spent too much time howling after Rey long after she’d gone.

There’s no answering sound, only the brush of fur over one of his legs, and then a familiar weight on his torso. He makes a noise that is best charitably described as a whimper.

“Kriff, that hurts.”

A wet nose butts against his.  _ Meow? _

Kylo screws open his good eye, but it only replaces one darkness with another. If the cat is right in front of his face, he can’t tell. He could create light but—actually, perhaps he can’t. Not in this state, not without the magic taking reserves from his body that will only do him harm in the long run. 

_ Think. _ There are torches in these passages. Rather than creating a light from pure energy, if he can find one, that will—

A tiny paw smacks his cheek. Thankfully, his unwounded one.

“You are not helping.”

A tail thumps across his chest.

He searches, shakily, for the nearest torch, hoping it’s not lying amongst the rubble with him. The last thing he needs is to set himself on fire. 

It takes time, and several more swats to his face, before he feels it. The promise of fire, gathered in a wad of grease-soaked linen. High on the wall. Once he’s found it, he pushes just enough energy into it for it to ignite.

Kylo squints against the sudden flare of light, and BB-8 lets out an indignant rumble. Kylo is glad to discover that it is, indeed, Rey’s cat, curled up between his chest and arm, staring at him with unblinking yellow eyes. He lifts his head enough to check that there’s enough space for the cat to get around the passage and—yes. The creature isn’t trapped in here with him, but Kylo can’t see beyond the rocks surrounding him.

“You should leave,” he tells the cat. “I’m not moving.”

The cat tilts his head, ears pivoting, then does get up, stretching and wandering off into parts of the tunnel hidden to Kylo’s sight.

And now what is Kylo going to do? Because despite what he just said, he must move. How the cat got into the passages is one issue, but without Kylo to let him out, they’re both trapped down here. BB-8 might have more luck finding sources of sustenance for a while, but they’ll dwindle soon enough. Then Kylo will be responsible for the death of Rey’s beloved companion, and he hardly needs another sin adding to his list of crimes against her.

He braces himself, experimentally. Pushing through his shoulders, seeing how much of himself he can move. Testing how fast the rock is stuck, and whether he can shift at all. He discovers the answer is yes—he can move, although every second of it is agony, wriggling out from between the slabs he’s pinned down by. It’s slow, agonizing, but if he focuses on the pain he doesn’t need to listen to Rey’s wordless scream of anger ringing through his head.

When he’s got himself enough space to sit upright, he does so. It doesn’t make much difference to his plight; he’s still surrounded by a deluge of rock and earth. The tunnel might still be in passable condition in the direction Rey went, but it’ll take him too long to dig himself out. His body is too battered, and because of that his magic reserves are depleted.

He’s resting his head against the embankment beside him and almost passed out again when stealthy paws drop back onto him. They still startle him—how does the creature get around without making any noise?—but at least this time he knows it’s not a rat.

Except it is. Or, rather, BB-8 has brought him a rat, clamped between his jaws, whose limp body he drops on the ground beside Kylo. Then he nudges at it. Looks at Kylo expectantly.

“All those times I brought you cream, and this is what I get in return?” Kylo asks the cat tiredly, though through the fog of exhaustion he finds tears tightening his throat. How strange, that he should be moved by the little beast’s concern. “Alright. Just let me rest first. Then I’ll see about getting us out of here.”

* * *

He’s not sure how long it takes to dig himself out. Long enough to burn through the three closest torches, and for BB-8 to fetch the remains of a festering pigeon, which had hardly helped Kylo’s delicate stomach or his concentration. He digs into his magic, letting it take from his own body this time, though he knows the risk. If he had any other choice—any other reserves left—he wouldn’t do it. 

At one point the cat comes and presses itself against his shivering body and he has to stop, abruptly letting his feeble stream of magic cut out so he doesn't draw the life out of the creature instead.

But little by little, he moves the rocks. Clears a hole large enough for him to crawl through, and then he keeps crawling, with BB-8 at his side.

If he had any dignity left, he’d care more about the sight he must make as he emerges into the Tekka’s yard. Naked, bloodied, smeared with dirt, quivering and clutching the cat to his chest to try and cover up some of his skin. It earns him nothing but claws sunk into his arms.

A cry of alarm sounds from inside the house, and Dasha comes rushing out. Kylo stays on his knees, head bowed in the vain hope his hair might hide his face. The pain still comes, but he’s almost numb to it by now. What does fire licking at his veins matter, when his heart has already been burned out of his chest?

“We didn’t think you were going to come this way,” Dasha tells him. “Not after this long.” She drapes him in something—a blanket, perhaps, and let’s him hang his head under the cloth. He doesn’t ask what she means.

“Where’s Rey? The girl?”

“Gone. Yesterday.”

She tries to coax him inside the house but she can’t force him to do that, not even in this weakened state. Instead she sends one of her boys for food, water, bacta. Kylo wants to reject all of it, but she’s insistent; a mother used to dealing with sniveling, stubborn children who refuse what’s good for them. BB-8 gets a bowl of cream while Kylo’s own wounds are cleaned, shivering and whining against the sting.

It takes most of the family to hold Kylo down while she deals with his face, and he’s sure the whole of Coruscant hears his cries then.

“I can’t heal it properly,” she says when she’s done as much as she can. “It’s already started on its own, and there’ll be a scar.”

He shrugs. What does it matter? Nobody is supposed to see his face anyway, and Rey had proven how objectionable she found it by scouring it the one and only time she was confronted with it.

“Is she safe?” he asks. He doesn’t ask where she’s gone—they won’t tell her, and he doesn’t want to know. If he doesn’t know, nobody can pull the information from him.

“Yes.” This comes from Lor San, who has emerged from the house finally. Kylo doesn’t look at him—can’t with the way a kerchief has been knotted tight around his face.

“Good. You should all leave. Snoke will know what you’ve been doing here, sooner rather than later.”

“You’re going back to him?” 

“I have to.” The curse ensures he can’t venture too far from Snoke for too long. “And I have nowhere else to go.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?” It’s not really a question, and as expected, he doesn’t receive a further answer. Because wherever Rey has gone, Kylo cannot follow her. The Resistance certainly won’t have him, and the rest of the kingdom will either slit his throat in his sleep or ship him back to Snoke for the coins. He might as well save them all the hassle.

The Tekkas bring him breeches, which are so small on him that he looks like a schoolboy, and prepare Grimtaash for the ride back to the fortress. Kylo can’t even get himself into the saddle properly, slumping over the side like a sack of potatoes and hoping he’ll make it to the fortress like this. BB-8 tries to clamber up after him, and Dasha has to take the little beast in her arms to keep him from following.

Coruscant is suspiciously quiet, even for the middle of the night, but Grimtaash picks his way over the cobbles and out through the Castle Gate. The ride on the Imperial Road is smoother, and Grimtaash is surer in his destination, having made this journey dozens of times.

In fact, it’s only because of the horse that Kylo makes it back to the fortress at all. Because by the time they reach the gates, with a cry going up from the watchmen, the poison from Kylo’s wounds has settled into his blood and set everything inside him on fire.

The last he sees are the gates closing behind him, swallowing him whole.

* * *

If time passes, Kylo doesn’t notice. For him, there’s only burning; being ravaged from the inside when he’s awake. But mostly he is unconscious, diving headfirst into the void to escape the pain.

Sometimes he wakes, and there’s a presence beside him. A serving girl bringing gruel he will barely be able to eat. Pressing a cool cloth to his forehead. When he’s awake enough to pay attention, he’s able to notice that he’s back in his cell in the fortress, sweating into the sheets of his cot.

Once or twice, he wakes, and the presence is suddenly more familiar. Rey is crouching beside him. Her soft hand presses to his cheek, murmuring concerns about the blistering temperature of his skin, her lips tight as she examines the wound on his face.

“It’s festering,” she tells him. “It needs more bacta.”

Her fingers hover over his ribs, forehead wrinkled with concern, and then she’s feeding him warm bread, with chunks of meat speared onto a fork. Urging him to take it, chew, swallow, drink water. 

“You need to eat,” she urges. “You’ve already lost so much weight and your body needs nourishment to heal.”

But between one breath and the next, with one slow, heavy blink, time slips. Rey becomes the serving girl again, and he realizes Rey was never here after all. 

Perhaps this entire year has been a fever dream and nothing more.

No—if that were the case, his face wouldn’t have been split in two. And he can very much feel that his face has been wounded, just as he remembers Rey doing.

He prefers the dreams after all, or the void, and he surrenders to it once more.

* * *

The void relinquishes its grip on him more and more. He ought to be thankful, but all it does is leave him staring at the endless gray monotony of the cell, feeling each and every second of every inch of pain.

He’s going to live, then. The fever has failed.

The next time the serving girl returns, carrying more gruel, she almost drops the bowl to find him awake and lucid. Largely because of the guttural cry he lets out when she sees his face, and the pain from it ignites into one specific barb of fire through his middle.

He grabs for the sheet to drag it over his head, to hide his face.

“You’re awake!” she proclaims, depositing the bowl on the table beside him. 

“So it would seem.” His mouth feels like Snoke has personally sucked all the life from it, and his voice is little more than a hoarse whisper. “How long have I been here?”

“Two weeks, my lord.”

Two weeks of fever. It truly is a miracle he’s survived. “I would like more than gruel to eat.”

“I—” She seems to hesitate. It is unusual for him to ask for more. “We’re not supposed to take orders from you anymore. They say you’re a prisoner now.” And she nods down at his ankle, where for the first time he can feel the cold bite of metal. A shackle.

He shouldn’t be surprised.

“It’s not an order, Lusica,” he tells her, dredging her name from the depths of his memory. “It is Lusica, isn’t it?” She nods, going a little pink in the cheeks. “It’s only a request, and you won’t be in any trouble if you don’t do it.”

“Oh.” She considers this for a moment. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you.” And then after a moment’s thought. “Could you pass me the bacta?”

“My lord?” 

“The bacta pot. It’s in that chest. I’d like to reapply it to my wounds. And a kerchief.”

She does as he asks, handing him the gruel at the same time, then leaves him to eat in peace. He doesn’t expect her to come back for a while, but she does. She knocks and gives him a chance to wrap his face in the kerchief before she enters. 

She has some bread and a cheese tart for him.

“I’m supposed to tell them you’re awake and ready to be questioned,” she says as she presses the food into his hands. “But I’m the only one checking on you, and I’m not convinced you’re out of the woods yet. So I’ll give it a few more days.”

He wants to catch her hand and squeeze it in gratitude, but he suspects she’ll flinch away from Kylo Ren trying to touch her. Instead he nods, inhaling the scent of the food and trying to ignore the clenching in his gut telling him just how hungry he still is.

“And I thought you’d need this.” On the bedside table, next to the pitcher of water, she places a small looking glass. “To help you with your face.”

He’s completely disinterested in looking at his face when she leaves, devouring the food and then drinking the entire pitcher within minutes. That leaves him with other pressing issues—luckily he is still able to reach the chamberpot beneath the cot—and at this point he decides that he really should attend to his wounds.

It’s both better and worse than he expected. The slash mark down his face isn’t green, or even a livid red anymore. Despite the way his eye had swollen shut at first, the wound actually misses his eye, beginning at the bridge of his nose and bisecting one cheek, then scouring across one collarbone. There is no chance of it healing without leaving a scar. Not when the process has already begun.

So be it. Nobody will ever see it but him.

When he twists the lid off the pot of bacta, only then does he notice that it’s a relatively fresh batch, one Rey had made for him in the castle. He’d brought it back with him before everything had gone so badly wrong. He’d expected some of it to have been used, but it hasn’t even been touched, despite the fact that he’s clearly had bacta applied to his face recently. And the serving girl hadn’t known where to find this either. Which means she hadn’t been the one who’d administered it.

Then who?

He doesn’t remember experiencing any of the usual pain from somebody seeing his face. But maybe he had been unconscious when it was done, and in so much other pain that his curse hadn’t been able to compete.

As for his current predicament—he gives his ankle an experimental tug, prodding at the shackle with his magic. It was his own shackle, the one he’d used on Rey—but when he reaches into the metal with his mind, he lurches abruptly out again. The reek of Snoke’s own rotten magic permeates it now, and even if Kylo was able to pick the lock, he’d have to push through that taint to do so. His stomach isn’t strong enough for that yet. Nor his powers.

He supposes he might have an answer as to who applied the bacta, as out of character as it might be for Snoke to get one of the serving girls to take care of Kylo. Because his own life—his own grasp on power—hangs in the balance with Kylo’s.

So long as he receives no bedside visits, Kylo can endure this. It’s not as though he has anywhere better to be.

* * *

Lusica is true to her word, and nobody comes for him for another four days. She sneaks him as much hearty food as she’s able to, and Kylo feels stronger by the day, even if he isn’t yet interested in testing his powers on the lock again.

On the fifth day, his luck fails, and Phasma comes to his cell bearing the key to his shackle. She’s on one crutch now, although Kylo is certain she still wears the back brace under her armor, and her gun hangs at her hip.

“I’d heard you suffered a calamity,” she says. “And with it, showed that my mission of the last several weeks was actually a hoax.”

“Is that so?” he asks tiredly. If she’s here to shoot him, he wishes she’d get on with it.

“A complete waste of time. And here you are, lying in bed, supposedly at death’s door and yet seeming remarkably hale to me. Or, at the very least, conscious.” Which will be all she can tell, with the kerchief covering his face.

“Are you here to extract revenge?” 

“Alas, the Emperor has forbidden all of us from inflicting further harm on you.” Her gloved fingers twitch around the key. “Though he sent me because I’m the only one he trusts not to be idiotic enough to try something anyway. No—I’m to escort you to your interrogation.”

He expects no dignity, and he isn’t granted any. She hauls him upright, and he’s still weak enough, unsteady on his feet after so much time unmoving, that he can’t fight back. Then he’s paraded through the corridors wearing only the breeches that he arrived in, unwashed and grimy with the remnants of fever.

“You stink,” Phasma hisses at his elbow. The walk is hardly rushed, given both of their injuries.

“Allow me to bathe first, and all will be well.”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

He feels it as soon as they enter the throne room. The anticipation—Hux and the Guard watching him with hungry glee. Somebody has diverted Snoke’s wrath away from them, and they couldn’t be happier at its new target. 

Kylo doesn’t so much kneel as collapse on the floor, unable to support himself any longer. Snoke is sat so far back in the throne that he’s shadowed, inscrutable. He looms over the room despite that, a cloud of rancid pestilence, heavy and foreboding. His presence is a whisper across Kylo’s flesh, creeping like maggots, jabbing at his wounds like the tip of a knife. 

“Take that ridiculous thing off.”

Kylo’s not sure what the order relates to until the kerchief is ripped away from his face with unseen hands.

And then the pain really begins.

* * *

Later, back in the cot, he floats in the void for a while. Some of his interrogation by Snoke he can remember. Snoke ripping into his head, peeling out his memories of Rey and the castle and their vows—all of it, every precious moment and more—taking them from Kylo like tearing strips from his skin. A pound of flesh and more.

He hopes the Tekkas did as he told them to and left, because they were in there, inextricably muddled alongside visions of flowers and silphium and cherries. They’ve had two and a half weeks. So has Rey. He hopes their connections are good, that the Resistance’s underground network is real and not a mere folk story told to keep hope alive. Because if it isn’t…

“Get out there,” Snoke had ordered the Guard. “All of you. I want you to search every inch of this kingdom. Find the Tekkas and bring them to me. I’ll extract the truth of Skywalker’s whereabouts from them personally.”

“And the scavenger?” Hux enquires, his smile an oily scum on his face. 

“She has no information worth having. Just bring me her head.”

Snoke didn’t seem to have any further use for Kylo, despite the Guard’s eager petitioning for more punishment. Which doesn’t mean Snoke has no intention of punishing Kylo—Kylo is not so naive. No, it only means Snoke is searching for something worse than a lashing, something he’ll truly relish inflicting.

At least Snoke stopped searching his memories at the point Kylo returned to the fortress, and missed Lusica’s extra help. Still, Kylo worries about that until she arrives the next morning with thick honeyed porridge and greasy bacon, completely unaware that she might have been in danger of punishment for treason.

He has plenty of time on his hands, as his ears still ring from the sound of his own screaming, to think about Rey. To worry about her. 

No matter that wherever she is, she’s probably cursing his existence, if she thinks of him at all. But he’s not convinced there is anywhere in the kingdom that is truly safe from Snoke and the Guard, not when there will soon be a great bounty on her head. He can’t warn her. Besides, how could she know that he’d come back to the fortress and betrayed her continuing existence in this way? How could she even know he’s still alive, after leaving him for dead?

And how could she know that he bears her no ill will for that, and that he hopes she isn’t suffering under the weight of guilt over using her magic to cause harm in that way?

It must be his worry for her that summons her into his dreams. 

Like all of them lately, she fusses over him. 

“You’re still thinner than I’m happy with,” she tells him as she applies more bacta to his face. “Though this is healing much better than it was.”

The pot of bacta confuses him enough that he starts to question the dream. It’s not the same pot he keeps in his cell, even though it feels like Rey is here in the room with him. The jar is different, the smell a little more pungent, tarter, just like Rey’s own recipe when she’d experimented and started adding herbs from her garden. Lavender and mint are layered with the bacta’s more mellow aroma.

And the poultice stings. Truly stings, making him grit his teeth against the sharpness.

But she looks directly at his face, free of any kerchief, without the curse rising up to shred at his nerves, so it must be a dream after all.

“Tell me you’re safe,” he asks of her. “Please—tell me you’re somewhere they can’t get to you anymore.”

She nods, screwing the lid back onto her jar. He notices more details now—the gray circles under her eyes. The woolen cloak she wears, something he’s never seen her in before; a strange detail for his imagination to concoct. His mother’s locket at her throat.

“I’m safe. I’m in no danger.”

“Good.” And before he yields to the void again— “I forgive you. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I know you’ll hate yourself for bringing the passageway down on me like that. Don’t. I understand why. I love you, and nothing can change that.”

Rey looks stricken, but then the dream changes—no, it ends. He’s blinking awake in his cell, alone again. Dream Rey has finished offering him the peace of mind he’s not going to find elsewhere.

Except, his face still smarts, so he reaches for the looking glass Lusica left for him, fearing infection has returned. But the mirror shows the skin healing well, the red faded to a deep, livid pink instead. Well, at least what he’s able to see of the wound—because it’s been smothered in a fresh layer of bacta, which he’s lucid enough to know neither he nor Lusica have applied.

And most incredible of all, the scent of lavender and mint hang in the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come follow me on [Tumblr](https://stellardarlings.tumblr.com/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/stellardarlings)!


	24. Chapter Twenty-Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey’s awake and stumbling to her feet before she’s even sure why.
> 
> Her sword is hungry in her hand—she sleeps with it ready, every night, never knowing when she might need it. Her wrist is pulsing, the strand of silver woven around it vibrating, attuned to the magical sensors she’s placed around the inn. She only has enough time to process that it means danger before she hears it: a sound. The whisper of cloth. The lightest footstep, more like pressure against the floorboards than a true noise.
> 
> Somebody is here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Who ordered more angst? This time in Rey flavour.

Rey’s awake and stumbling to her feet before she’s even sure why.

Her sword is hungry in her hand—she sleeps with it ready, every night, never knowing when she might need it. Her wrist is pulsing, the strand of silver woven around it vibrating, attuned to the magical sensors she’s placed around the inn. She only has enough time to process that it means danger before she hears it: a sound. The whisper of cloth. The lightest footstep, more like pressure against the floorboards than a true noise.

Somebody is here.

She throws her shields up and glances around the room she’s sleeping in, the dusty back store of an inn. She’s been sleeping on a pile of sacks of hay—not the most comfortable of beds she’s ever had—and it’s still the middle of the night, because the inn is deathly silent. The room’s dark but the moon shines through the cracks around the warped, ancient door, giving her enough light to see by. Which is good—because she daren’t cast a light of her own. It’d be like giving them a beacon to her position.

She doesn’t know who  _ they _ are—though she can give it a good guess. All she knows is that they set off the traps she laid before going to sleep, and that for them to come at this time, creeping around trying to catch the inn’s inhabitants unawares, means they don’t have good intentions.

It’s for the best she’s been sleeping so poorly ever since…ever since. She might be bone-weary but at least she’s alive. 

The traps have been effective, and now it’s time to enact her escape plan. She hasn’t slept anywhere without one, not when she knows the Guard are on her tail. Rubies and emeralds have kept many mouths shut as she traveled through the kingdom, but there are always those who think they can get even more out of Snoke by giving her up. 

Perhaps this inn was a bad choice—perhaps she should have strung her hammock up in the woods. But the nights are colder than Rey can bear, the frost still thick on the ground, and in the absence of an outhouse or barn to slip into, Rey had opted for the only place guaranteed to take in passing strangers for the night.

“We can prepare our best room for you upstairs,” the innkeeper had told her, when Rey discretely showed him how much she was willing to pay. But she’d declined, preferring to stay close to the ground, where it would be easier to take flight from if she needed to.

There’s a back door out of the store room, and that’s Rey’s preferred way out of here. She grabs her knapsack and staff, strapping them both to her back. Then she fastens the sword holster at her hip. But she’s not so foolish as to wrench the door open and slip out through it without checking first. Instead, she takes a fistful of hay, and slips it underneath her door. Then she pushes it with her magic, up and out, letting the hay balloon until it forms the shadow of a cloaked figure. She holds her breath and listens, waiting for the sound of her shadow-counterpart to draw fire.

But one of the stairs creaks overhead. They’ve gone up there, then, assuming she’s in one of the bedrooms. And there’s no sound from outside. They’ve either not fallen for her illusion, or they’re not watching all the doors.

Sloppy. Although she supposes the Guard  _ are _ down by two men by now.

_ Three,  _ her mind helpfully corrects her.  _ Kylo is no longer among them either. _

The last thought is so unbearable that it makes her bold. It’s easier to wrench the door open and step out into the night, throwing up a shield around herself to mask her presence if anybody happens to be looking. Feeling this fear—the pounding heart, the icy breath—is better than thinking of  _ him _ .

Rey’s lucky. Nobody’s out here, and she runs for the trees without looking back.

She’s been following the road until now, which is how she came across the inn tonight, when it was time to settle down and sleep. But now she keeps pushing into the woods, far away from the road, because she knows the Guard are travelling on it. If she tries to travel as she has been, walking in the trees beside the road, they’ll catch up with her easily, whichever direction she goes in. This way they can only follow her on foot—not on horseback, not by transport. And she doesn’t think they’ll even think to try this far into the woods.

Despite how tired she is, she keeps going. Her legs ache, her feet have blisters sprouting blisters. Four weeks of walking and she still has no idea if she’s any closer to where she’s supposed to be going. Dawn is a faint smudge of pale blue somewhere to the east, a cruel reminder of how few hours of sleep she really got. And those were shallow hours at best, plagued by dreams of…

No. No dreams. She refuses to acknowledge them.

She can smell smoke, and when she turns around there’s a telltale golden glow from the way she came. The inn is on fire.

She hopes everyone got out to safety, but she’s too tired to summon much sorrow. She’s already a murderer—what’s a little more blood on her hands?

It’s unlikely that it was the innkeeper who sold her out—there probably wasn’t enough time between her arrival and the Guard’s for him to even do that. But she doesn’t think it was the family who housed her the night before either. Not after she helped their child, who’d broken his leg so badly the week prior that the healer wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to walk again. Rey had used her magic to fix the bone, the way she’d learned with the broken windows in the castle. His parents were so grateful they’d loaded her up with food before sending her on her way; it’s hard to imagine they’d have then turned around and let the Guard know which direction she was headed in after that.

Which means it must’ve been the innkeeper from at least two nights ago. The Guard then followed the road she was on and scoured potential sleeping places nearby. 

Though Rey’s spent the entire month of her travels waiting to be hunted by the Guard, it’s only in the last week that they’ve done so. She’s not sure what’s changed, but she feels like every step she takes now leaves a bloody footprint behind her. But tonight proves she must stop relying on people. She’s only putting them in danger. Instead, she’ll need to keep hidden as best she can until she reaches her destination.

The trees end abruptly, and she’s so preoccupied with what’s behind her that she almost hurtles face-first down a riverbank and into the water. Only her reflexes, rusty as they are with exhaustion, keep her on her feet. That is, until she overcorrects and lands on her backside. Hard.

She sits there for a moment, staring at the burbling water, wondering how she’s going to cross the river. And then she bursts into tears.

Rey wishes she could say the tears are a new thing. In many ways they are; the person she was in Jakku never would have allowed such self-pity. But being in the castle has changed her, and almost every night since escaping has found her weeping one way or another.

The first night after leaving Coruscant, she’d lain awake on the hard stone floor of a cellar, listening to the cacophony even a small village seems to make at night. Or perhaps it only seemed loud because she’d become used to the soft bed and utter tranquility at the castle. Whatever the reason, sleep hadn’t even been in the realm of possibility in that cellar. She’d clamped her palm over her mouth and sobbed into it, as quietly as she was able to, failing to keep her emotions at bay any longer.

She’d cried first out of self-pity, and she loathes herself for it. But she’d been in love,  _ real  _ love, with Ben. Perhaps even with Kylo. Learning that they’re the same man doesn’t make it any less confusing, though her prolonged attraction to Kylo makes more sense now. At least, that’s what she tells herself, to soothe that guilt—that she’d recognized him in both forms, even if she hadn’t understood it.

Except it had all been a lie—probably even the part where he’d told her that he loved her. It had been a ruse to get into her bed, an elaborate ploy to get her to lower her guard around him. 

When the first wave of betrayal eased, somewhere in the marshes of Kef Bir, those thoughts subsided too. Just a little. Ben loved her, even if he was Kylo, because Kylo loved her. He’d proved that in all he’d done for her. It might not have been the sweet, unselfish love she’d hoped for from Ben, but she’d been loved nevertheless. 

Besides—she’d had to beg for it. Beg for Ben’s kisses, for his body, for his vows. She’d pushed for every scrap of affection from Ben, and he’d deterred her at every step. If he’d only been trying to get into her bed, he wouldn’t have resisted her so hard.

But the reality of being loved by Kylo didn’t stop him lying to her. Nor did it stop him from manipulating her, or keeping her as his prisoner. Even if he’d tried to do the right thing, ultimately he’d always ceded to temptation: kissing her. Marrying her. Bedding her. 

Yes, the curse had stopped him from spelling out the truth for her, but he’d as much admitted to using that as an excuse to remain close to her. All the hints she’d ignored because she’d been so desperate for somebody to love her.

She doesn’t even know how to refer to him in her own head. She wants to remember him as Ben, but when she thinks back on all he ever told her, she’s not sure Ben existed anymore. He’d been Kylo for too long, and it’s the Kylo part of him that allowed him to lie and trick her. So in her head, he becomes Kylo entirely. Because underneath the mantle of Ben, it had been Kylo talking to her all along, taking off one mask to replace it with a new one at night. Only this one had been of his own making, designed to win Rey’s favor.

Perhaps it’s easier to think of him as Kylo. Perhaps it’s too hard to think of him as Ben and grieve the man he could have been.

She should have poured her affection into BB-8 instead. And when she remembered the cat, as she bedded down in an attic in Endor, she cried for him too. Abandoned, trapped in the castle. How long would he survive without her? Was there enough food for him to catch? Had he been searching for her, doing circles of the grounds trying to figure out where she went? Rey was responsible for his death, deliberately or not.

But when it came to death she’d caused—Kylo’s hadn’t been inadvertent. She’d known the damage she’d do to him, bringing the tunnel down on him like that. She can still remember his wide eyes, face a mask of blood and pain as he realized she was burying him in there. She’d done that to him.

Why did he have to chase her? Why couldn’t he have let her go?

She cried because she’s a widow. She cried because she’s a murderer.

On that first night out of the castle, she’d been able to smell him still. She hadn’t washed after leaving their bed and venturing up into his tower room, so his sweat still lingered on her skin, and his spend painted her thighs. She’d begged, offered up an entire sapphire to a bemused villager, just for the opportunity to use a proper bathtub and get clean. To scrub him from her skin. Except washing him away for the final time had made her cry even harder.

And then, a week later, when her monthly courses came, she’d had to suffer through them while trudging the dusty path between one town and the next. It reminded her of all she could have had with Ben, and all that’s been lost to his lies. Dasha Tekka had given her a fresh supply of silphium for her travels, which helps with the worst of the pain, but it’s not enough to banish it entirely.

Rey remembered to bring her own bacta when she left the castle, though that’s dwindling fast. She applies it sparingly to her blisters before she falls asleep at night, and the scent of it is still on her fingers when she wakes up. She dreams of using it too—of applying it to  _ his _ wounds.

The dreams are why she’s sleeping so badly. Knowing she’s being tracked by the Guard might not make for a restful night, but the dreams started long before the Guard arrived. No, the dreams of Kylo were summoned by her guilt. It’s the only explanation. Why else would she find herself in his cell in Snoke’s fortress, Kylo fitful with fever, his face split open by the sword wound she gave him? The gash festering.

She tends to him in those dreams: cleaning out the wound and packing it with poultice. Sharing food from her supplies with him—the bread she fell asleep holding because she was so exhausted. It’s gone when she wakes up, and she must have eaten it in between bouts of sleep. At least the jewels are buying her plenty of food, and she isn’t going hungry. Whereas Kylo—or Ben—or whatever his true name is...he’s gray, and clammy, and his ribs are showing under his skin. She coaxes him to take the food, and mops his brow, and brushes his hair back from his face. Like a lover.

Like a wife.

It’s all pointless, caring for a dead man like this. But her mind returns her to his cell, night after night, like a penitent. Hoping that she can make him better, and ignore his true fate.

He whispers to her what she wants to hear.  _ I forgive you. I love you, and nothing can change that.  _ She accepts his words, knowing even before she wakes up that they’re a fabrication of her unconscious mind, which is desperate for his forgiveness. The dreams are the closest she’ll ever get to his real forgiveness.

But she never says it back to him. 

These last few nights have been the worst. Him insisting that it’s real, rather than dreams. Instead of him breaking in and out of fever, barely recognizing her when he’s lucid, he’s awake whenever she sees him now.

“I waited for you,” he tells her. “I wanted to see you again.”

No fever, his wounds healing nicely, and his ribs no longer so prominent, even if his skin is more sallow than she’d like. The circles under his eyes are hollow and bruised. But he’s warm when she touches him, instead of hot and clammy, and he lets her indulge him, patting fresh poultice into his wound.

“This isn’t a dream, you know,” he insists. “You really have been helping me heal.”

“I can’t heal a ghost,” she says curtly. All of this is her sleeping mind trying to convince herself that she is still able to repair the damage she’d caused.

The scar she gave him isn’t so livid anymore. A visible mark that Rey left on him, a more permanent reminder than the wedding rings they’d never got to wear. But it’s not as though she knew Kylo’s face enough to mourn it without the scar, and now she still drinks in the version that her subconscious mind supplies to her: high, sharp cheekbones, prominent nose, narrow chin. A cloud of dark hair which she’s washed and combed for him to stop it becoming matted while he’s in his cot all the time. Large eyes that are incongruously childlike in a man so large. A face she wishes she could have admired during all their months together.

That, more than anything, proves it’s all in her head. Because if it were real—if he were alive and she were able to see him—she’d only cause him pain by looking upon his face. But he doesn’t flinch from her scrutiny even now that he’s awake.

By the time the cold sun is making a dismal attempt at shining on the river, Rey is hungry. She snacks on a cold meat pie she took from the inn—some food she’d bought, some she’d snuck into her bag when the owner was already in bed, while Rey set her traps. This and what the family from the previous night gave her will last her for a few days if she can’t find another source. It’s not as much as she had grown used to in the castle, but hadn’t she told herself she’d regret getting used to so much food? When she finishes eating, she creeps cautiously down the riverbank, splashing her face clean of sweat and tears, and drinking her fill of the icy water.

Where to from here?

Not back to the road, that’s for sure. And probably not over this river, not with how wide it is and how fast it’s flowing. But if it’s this large, it ought to be marked on the map.

She searches for a large enough boulder—a nice dry one—to spread out the map Lor San Tekka had given her. It’s more up-to-date than many in the castle, with the newer Imperial roads and forts clearly noted. It’s also far more useful than any other map Rey has ever seen: it has marked on it all the Resistance safe houses, and the locations which are known to be sympathetic to their cause. Homes where she could rely on a bed for the night or a meal without the risk of being turned over to the Guard for some coin.

She retraces her steps from the previous day, on the road between Yavin and Batuu, and she’s able to find the inn. Not marked as a safe place, but then, there was nowhere near this area that was. She’d made the best decision she could. From the inn, she draws her finger west across the map, through the woods to the river. 

The river runs parallel to the road, although it curves away a few miles north, towards the mountains which are marked as the western limit of the map. She can see them when she looks up, their gray, cloud-wrapped tips peeking over the treetops. The map indicates there’s a ford in the river upstream, and a bridge downstream, if she needs to cross the water. She wants to, hoping it would put even more room between herself and her pursuers, but she’s not sure if going that way will lead her in the right direction. And that’s the problem with this map: it shows many things, but not her destination.

To find that, she needs something else entirely.

She reaches inside her tunic and pulls out the treasure she has hidden on a chain. It’s not the pendant with Ben’s hair—that she refuses to touch unless she absolutely must, keeping it tucked against her heart even as she pretends it doesn’t exist. No, this morning she needs to check the compass.

“Follow this,” Lor San had told her when he tucked it into her hand, “and it will show you the way.”

The way is apparently to the hideout of the Resistance leaders. Rey had protested, at first, when Lor San told her that’s where she should go, but in the end, what choice did she have? She can’t return to Jakku, and the Tekkas can’t get her out of the kingdom.

The compass looks golden, though Rey is fairly certain it’s made from brass or some other cheaper alloy. On the back, Luke’s twin suns are inscribed in the metal. And when she flicks it open, there’s a needle to point north, as well as a second, longer one. That one is supposed to guide her to her destination.

Yesterday it had pointed Rey north, along the Imperial road. She’s not surprised that it does the same today, the twin needles perfectly aligned.

So. Crossing the river is out, no matter how much safer she’d feel on the other side of it. 

She wishes the compass would tell her whether she’s close. That’s its drawback: that it can urge her on, but never tell her how much further she has to go. And the map gives her no help at all on that front.

She folds it back up and stashes it in her bag, tucking the compass safely under her clothes, and sets off trudging up the river bank.

* * *

Hours later, Rey throws herself down onto another boulder and unfolds the map again. Surely the compass can’t have her following the river forever—tracking the way it curves west, rising up into the foothills of the formidable mountains which separate the kingdom from Chandrila. She’s worried about how late the afternoon has already grown, with nowhere in sight for her to rest. She hasn’t seen any creatures, but that’s only because plenty of them sleep during the day, or are sleeping all winter. At night, they will emerge. And some of them will emerge hungry.

She might have fared better trying to rest during the light, climbing a tree to nap in. She’d have been safe from discovery up there. But she’d tried sleeping during the day and walking at night early on in her journey, to attract less attention, and that had been disastrous. She was too on edge for daylight sleeping—she’d almost stabbed two friendly hosts with her sword, and then even herself while delirious from lack of sleep. Besides, she feels too vulnerable traveling at night, even with her weapons and all her magic on hand.

She hopes she can rest when she reaches her destination, though after all these weeks, it’s beginning to feel like she will never get there. Perhaps Lor San Tekka’s faith in this compass was misplaced, and it’s leading her on a merry dance. Maybe her destination doesn’t exist at all.

It’s impossible to tell how far she’s traveled today. She passed the ford, and crossed the track which led to it, but that was a few hours ago. Apart from that, the woods are endless, austere pines and firs rising around her to create a wall of mottled green. The land constantly slopes uphill, making her calves ache, and the only change in the river is that it’s narrower than before. Getting closer to its source, which is probably somewhere in the mountains.

Is the compass leading her to those? Through them? It would make sense if Luke Skywalker is not in the kingdom at all, but on the other side of those walls of rock, truly safe from Snoke. But she can’t hope to make her way through them; not in winter, but probably not at all. There are no known mountain passes on the map. It’s not as though Rey can convince a farmer or merchant to let her ride in the back of their cart, as she did in the early days of her travels. The entire journey will have to be done on foot, and there is no chance at all of her surviving it.

The map gives her no answers, and the only promise of shelter is an apparently abandoned ferry master’s house on the edges of Lake Devaron, which she’ll reach if she keeps following the river. 

Rey’s heard of the lake: it was famous, near-mythical in Jakku, to hear of that much fresh water concentrated in one place. Old legends claimed there had once been an island at the center of it, but that the island had vanished under its waters during the reign of King Ezra and taken an evil wizard with it. Still, the map shows no island, just a clear stretch of water many miles across, and ferry docks at each end for people who wanted to cross the water rather than circumnavigate it. On the other side lies Lothal—now mostly swampland. The ferries had fallen out of use when an Imperial road was built directly through the forest to Lothal, since people no longer needed to cross the lake.

Rey supposes a ruined house is better than nothing. It might even prove to be a step above her old place in Jakku; her time in the castle has truly made her soft. If she keeps going she can get there before she needs to sleep, if not before dark. And that way, at least when she closes her eyes and sees Kylo in her dreams, nobody will be around to hear her crying.

The aches in her body have turned to a tired numbness by the time the trees begin to thin out. The ridge of mountains crest above the treetops, many miles away but appearing to loom over Rey anyway. They blot out the sun, which has started to descend behind them already.

The lake is a surprise, even though she’s expecting it. The river feeds directly from it, and so rather than stumbling onto the edge of the lake, the other side of the river slowly widens out instead, stretching away from Rey until she’s facing a gaping indigo plain. The water’s flat expanse frames the mountains, and Rey feels tiny in comparison to both of them. They’ve been here long before her, and they’ll be here long after her, uncaring of all her hopes and losses. Unmoved by even her current suffering. 

The water isn’t perfectly still, like she expected—there are waves, the wind pushing ripples across the surface of the lake, breaking up the deep blue with little caps of white foam. She can see all the way across it, and she thinks the dark smudge on the opposite shore is the other dock.

She finds the ferry-master’s house, and it’s more substantial than she expected. It’s right at the end of the dock, propped up on stone stilts, and the door swings open easily when she climbs the ladder to it. Inside is dusty—as long-abandoned as the map and stories had led her to believe—but there is an old cot which she can sleep on. The place was left in haste, its contents left behind by whoever had lived here.

There’s also a trapdoor in the floor, which when lifted reveals another ladder down towards a platform that rests above the water. Lashed to the platform is a little rowing boat. Rey finds it strange that a boat was left here, and that it appears to be in good condition—not that she knows much about boats—but perhaps people do still use them to cross the lake from time to time. It’s not as though nobody ever goes to Lothal; it just doesn’t warrant a permanent ferry anymore.

She eases herself down into the cot—it’s not exactly soft, but it’s better than sleeping on the bare earth, and her feet are screaming their relief. She doesn’t think she could stand up right now if her life depended on it. She sets her staff and sword beside her, then has a quick meal from her supplies. At least this building was well-constructed, and the breeze from the lake does not creep its way through the wooden planks to create a draft. If she huddles up properly, she’ll sleep well.

The question is—where does she go from here? Into the mountains? Impossible, and yet that seems to be where the compass will lead her next. It might be better to wait for spring. Surely the thaw can’t be that far away?

She hates this whole journey. For all the months she’d longed for her freedom, she’d forgotten how hard the world outside the castle can be. She’d gotten her wish, but it is a poisoned chalice, setting herself chasing after something she might never reach. The only thing she’d chased after this hard was…

Ben. 

She’d wanted him so badly, that he’d pushed her beyond the limits of her own vulnerability and what she found comfortable. He’d been so reticent, and often it had left her distraught, but her desire for him—her desire to be loved and wanted in return by a man like him—had made her push through the sting of rejection, over and over. She’d been more vulnerable with him than she’d ever allowed herself to be with anybody else, even when he’d been uncertain, when he’d pushed away, when he’d  _ run _ away from her. She’d wanted him to pursue her like—like Kylo had. Even if Kylo’s pursuit had resulted in her captivity. 

Perhaps that was why she’d never been able to quell her desire for Kylo; because he’d never made her fight to keep him in the way Ben had. He’d been undeterred from his want of her, even in the face of her anger, her attacks, her own worst qualities. And she still doesn’t know how to reconcile the fact that the two men were one and the same after all.

Rey idly brings out the compass to check it again, sure it will be pointing to where she cannot follow. She has to squint at it in the darkness, and when the needle doesn’t seem to settle, she’s sure that her eyes have begun to fail from exhaustion. Yet the longer she stares, the more she can see: north holds steady. But the second needle, the one she needs to follow, keeps moving. Spinning, spinning, settling for just a moment, then spinning again. Jerking when it pauses, like it’s as confused as Rey is.

She goes to the window, which has one of the shutters hanging from it, to place the compass in better light. But it keeps doing the same thing—and when it stops, briefly, it points across the lake every time.

Or to the center of it.

Rey lifts the trapdoor again and stares down at the little boat. She’s never even been in one, and what she’s contemplating is ridiculous. She has no idea how to swim if she’s wrong about this. Her feet are demanding she sit right back down and get some rest.

But when she climbs down the ladder, the compass needle skips a little more. Pointing out into the lake with more determination—almost urgency. 

She collects her weapons and sets all her belongings down in the boat, then unties the rope which moors it to the platform. There are oars in the bottom, and a little seat which she takes. She grips the oars, one in each hand, dipping their ends down into the water, and tries swishing them, but the only movement the boat makes is due to the water’s current alone. She makes more attempts over a few minutes, until she’s so frustrated she could cry, before pulling them out of the water and dropping them amongst her weapons.

It doesn’t matter. She can do magic, can’t she? She doesn’t need oars.

She cups the compass in her palm and focuses on the needle, urging the boat to follow it and her will. She pushes backwards while allowing the compass to guide her through the water, correcting constantly as the needle wavers. The further out she gets, the more the needle settles, until it doesn’t move at all.

When Rey looks up, she can see the island.

There’s no doubt that magic was hiding it from view on the shore. Even now, it’s misty, an illusion, the mountains behind it still showing through as she looks at it. But the closer she gets, the more solid it appears. It’s a mountain peak in itself, craggy ridges rising dramatically from the water, with only a tiny strip of rocky shoreline. 

The lights of fires dot the jagged shape, flickering warmly. When Rey gets close enough, she can see a jetty protruding from the shore and into the lake. She aims for that, tucking the compass away safely. She doesn’t need it anymore.

On the jetty stands a small figure, bronze-skinned and wearing magnifying goggles. She’s smiling warmly as Rey gets closer, and holds her arms out towards Rey, reaching for the mooring rope as soon as it’s close enough.

“Rey,” Maz says, “it’s so good to see you. Welcome to Ahch-To.”

* * *

Whatever Rey expected of the Resistance, it wasn’t this. 

The fires she’d seen from the vantage point of her boat light the caves which riddle the island’s heights. A steep, stony path spirals its way up towards them, and Maz tells Rey that many Resistance members live in them. Luckily, Rey doesn’t have to navigate the path—instead she’s guided to a set of dwellings that sit just above the beach, little beehive-shaped huts built from quarried stone. They look ancient.

“They are,” Maz confirms, “but we’ve made them perfectly habitable. And we’ve saved one for you.”

“For me?” She blinks as she’s ushered towards one of them, which has a doorway propped open, so Rey can see the hearth lit inside. “How did you know I was coming?”

“We’ve always known you’d come to us eventually.” Maz smiles. “Do you like it?”

The inside of the hut is sparse, despite the welcoming glow of the fire. It consists of only one circular room, with a cot tucked up against one wall, and a few wooden trunks framing it. The walls are unfinished inside, the same stone as the exterior, though the floor is laid in flagstones to cover the bare earth. The hut smells smoky, but there’s an undercurrent of dampness which leaves Rey feeling like she’s still out on the lake, with the breeze tossing droplets of lake water at her. 

It’s nothing compared to her chamber at the castle. But compared to her hut in Niima, it’s a palace.

“Yes,” she reassures Maz, dropping her knapsack onto one of the trunks. She’s still confused—how could they have known she’d come to them? Had Lor San Tekka got word to them ahead of her? That doesn’t make sense; if he had a messenger, surely he’d have sent them with Rey to act as a guide.

“I know it’s late, but a few people would like to meet you.”

Maz doesn’t wait for Rey to confirm she’s ready to meet anybody, nor does she tell Rey how they know about her or why they want to meet her. Maz just scurries back out of the hut with a backwards gesture at Rey to follow. If it weren’t Maz, Rey would probably refuse, would insist she’s too tired from the journey and that this could wait until morning. But it  _ is _ Maz, and Rey is so delighted to find her here, alive and safe, that she’s willing to indulge her.

“Who is it?” she whispers as she steps outside. “Is it Luke Skywalker?”

But in the little courtyard circled by the cluster of huts, there are faces too young to be the exiled prince. Two of them, in fact, both dark-skinned and barely older than Rey: a man with his hair kept in neat little twists, and a lofty woman whose curls are kept back from her face by a tight band of silk. The woman’s excited smile reveals a gap between her front teeth.

“This is Finn and his sister Jannah,” Maz says by way of introduction.

They’re both wearing beige old-fashioned robes, which strike Rey as peculiar. 

“We’re novices,” Finn explains when he sees Rey taking in their robes, and holds his hand out for Rey to shake. 

Rey’s about to ask novices in what, until she touches his hand—and feels the familiar rush of magic.

“You can wield magic too,” she says breathlessly, feeling a smile tug at her mouth for the first time in weeks. It’s the same when she takes Jannah’s hand. “I didn’t know the Resistance had other users!”

“We’ve collected a few over the years,” Maz tells her. 

More than ever it feels like Rey’s missing something important. If the Resistance already has people who can use magic—people who have been trained by Luke Skywalker—why do they need her at all? Why were they expecting her—why does it feel like they’ve been waiting for her arrival? Why are they treating her like she’s different to the rest of them?

There’s a creak of wood behind her, and she turns to find the door to one of the other huts opening. Framed in the doorway, lit from behind by the hearth, stands a grizzled old man, clad in rough, worn robes. His hair and beard are long, streaked heavily with a gray that makes them appear lank and dirty. 

Everybody has turned to follow her gaze, and she feels the tension in them—the way Finn and Jannah in particular adjust their postures, standing taller. At attention, like soldiers.

She’s wondering who the man is. His eyes glint a cold blue, and the features of his face are familiar to her, if only she could place them.

“Is this the girl?” he asks Maz.

“Yes, Luke,” Maz replies, and Rey is astonished for the second time tonight. The man before her is nothing like the prince whose portrait she’d seen. Of course he’s aged, but she didn’t expect him to be so careworn, so weary. He hardly looks like the leader of the Resistance—the bearer of the twin suns—or the great sorcerer that she expected him to be.

He barely looks at Rey before he turns his back. “You should have left her where she was.”

The door to his hut closes firmly behind him, leaving Rey blinking at it in shock.

“Perhaps now is not the best time for introductions,” Maz says. “It’s late, and you are swaying on your feet, Rey.”

“Yes,” Rey agrees, trying to mask her disappointment as tiredness. “I should get some rest.”

They leave her to close the door to her own hut, where she crosses to the little cot on the opposite wall. The blankets are clean and soft to the touch—linen and wool, well used but also well cared for. Though the mattress isn’t as luxurious as the one she’d slept on in the castle, it’s better than a cellar floor or her hammock, and yields pleasantly beneath her body weight. She climbs up onto it, pleased by the silence outside, the crackle of the fire lulling her into peace.

Finally, Rey can sleep.

* * *

“You’re late tonight,” he tells her. It’s not a complaint—just an observation offered with a soft, concerned smile. “Are you safe?”

“Yes—I’m safer than I have been since I left the castle.” She’s already beside his cot, and busies herself with preparing a bowl of water to wash him down with. 

“Good,” he says emphatically. “I worry about the Guard hunting you.”

“You don’t need to. Where I am now, they can’t find me.” She soaks a cloth in the water and wrings it out, approaching him carefully. He props himself up on his elbows, the sheet falling down to reveal his naked chest. Despite the weight he’s lost, he’s still thickly muscled, and the sight of it stirs something in Rey—almost a wish that she could have seen him like this when they were together. Almost.

“You know, you don’t need to do that.” He takes the bowl from her. “I can clean and tend to myself now.”

“What if I want to keep taking care of you?”

He stares up at her with those big eyes—warm, like polished wood—and she has to look away, or she’ll break under the wave of shame.

“Rey, you don’t have to. I’ve told you over and over—this is real, not some fantasy you made up to make yourself feel better. Everything you’ve done—the healing, the food—has kept me alive.”

She bites her lip to hold back the tears. She can’t even bring herself to say the words—to tell him, like she has so many times, that he’s not alive anymore, not anywhere except in her head. She doesn’t have it in her to kill him a second time. Even if he is just a dream.

“I wish that were true,” she says. “But it can’t be. Because I am on the edge of the kingdom, and you aren’t here with me. Even in my head, I’ve got you locked up in Snoke’s fortress.”

Kylo shakes his head. “The only one who has me locked up here is Snoke. But we are talking to each other. Face to face.”

“That’s not possible.”

“I didn’t think so either, at first. Not until I remembered the old stories of marriage bonds—of magic users being able to communicate with each other across the miles.”

Rey did come across those in her extensive reading when she was in the castle library. Which means that’s a detail her imagination is able to supply, and proves nothing.

So she pushes that obligation to Kylo instead. “Prove it.”

“Wake up,” he tells her. “Wake up, and we’ll still be able to talk to each other.”

“And how exactly do you propose I do that?”

He purses his lips, before grabbing her hand and bringing it towards him. Then he dunks it in the cold water.

“Hey!” she protests, but before she’s even finished, she is blinking awake, staring blearily at the stones of the roof. She’s in her cot, in the hut on Ahch-To. The fire has died down, so all is quiet and dark.

But her hand is wet. And there’s a warmth beside her, another body close to her own in the bed.

Kylo is alive.

And he’s here in her hut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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